Nicholas Crafts: Is the age of fast economic growth really over?

Are techno-optimists correct that artificial intelligence will bring about a fourth industrial revolution and bring back strong productivity growth in America? My guest today, Nicholas Crafts, examines this question from a historical perspective by looking at the nature of the previous industrial revolutions and evaluating whether artificial intelligence may serve as a new general purpose technology in the same manner as steam and electrification. Nicholas is a professor of economics and economic history at the University of Warwick, where he studies economic growth, the Industrial Revolution, and the history of general purpose technologies. He recently gave a fascinating presentation to the Bank of England, titled “AI as a GPT: An Historical Perspective.” You can also check out the transcript of this podcast here.