Need some semblance of units here to really mean anything.
"Sounds like a math problem it could take a computer to figure out" :)
Which is the kind of quote you would commonly hear from people who were born in the 19th century themselves, those that survived WWI & WWII. By the time they made it about halfway to the 21st century they knew what a computer was just as well as about everybody of any age. But most people didn't expect to see a computer room in person, and they knew nobody was going to be owning their own computer any time soon if ever, making it a problem that one person could not solve on their own. So you might as well give up now [0].
That didn't stop me from trying with my (very low power) new handheld (plus stylus!), of appropriate toddler grade. It would run for hours on end, batteries not included because they were not needed, designed to run forever without electrical input. Where else were you going to get almost 20 bits of integer range as a kid at the time? Given to me by the founder of Raymond, James, he though it was so precious:
https://www.irememberjfk.com/the-magic-brain-calculator/?sfw...
Unlike prescription pill bottles at the time, or the internet, these calculators were actually child-proof when used as recommended :)
Learned a lot about technology from people born in the 19th century.
When there is no possible way to put accurate numerical figures on something because only the most wildly inaccurate comparisons can be made, you just have to do the best you can otherwise. Especially when obsolete-to-modern currency is involved, the only thing numbers can do is fool you.
So the dollar won't help you now.
I'll do the best with the units I have to work with.
I can estimate the Industrial Revolution as inexactly as anybody.
It was as big as it could be.
Plus or minus "almost as big" which is still incredibly massive, or "not much bigger" since there wasn't much further to go.
OK for numbers this should be open to a survey of fact-based opinions, but how about +/- half as big up to twice as big at the most.
Of course I'm just making this up, that's what happens when you put numbers where they don't belong ;)
Just accounting for real inflation and devaluation over all this time, plus consideration for enhanced or limited upside potential by comparison, I would think AI is still going to take a lot more than 10x what peoples' financial calculations are if it's going to have an equal impact.
It does make you wonder, where's all that money supposed to come from?
If AI fails to be as big as it could be for any reason, it's not even going to measure up, much less reach 10x.
That's math so "advanced" that I don't even have to try and estimate the dollar value of AI either, it's astronomical too, and nobody can count that high now any better than they could with a slide rule anyway.
With all the wealth that has been expended on AI so far, large amounts of energy and labor have been "consumed" by hardware and those resources will need to remain incoming (paradoxically "using up" hardware at the same time) while the expensive hardware will be obsolete relatively soon. And in need of replacement, or alternatively replaced before needed in order to maintain competitiveness. Which is the ordinary fate of this particular class of hardware. Even the software may not last as many decades as the 19th century technologies were successful at. Who knows, software or "code" could even be more costly to replace than the hardware over the long run, no matter how good the vibes get. Plus "good vibes" can often be subject to pressure, driving up the cost and making them the most expensive out-of-reach vibes :)
It may be the kind of thing where the vast majority of people do not get their money's worth with AI to a degree that turns out to be one of the most important confounding variables that further contributes to making a comparison unreliable.
The amount of hard industry that might have been possible if AI had waited until it wasn't so costly, might have resulted in a more significant revolutionary revival than people think too.
Perhaps more significant than whether the Industrial Revolution was either half as big or twice as big as it really was, and that's in the denominator.
[0] "But Mommy, that's all I want a computer for !"
Sure that $acronym that can solve all our problems would be swell. Just write more checks for GPU farms you say?
-- from this article, articles 5 years ago, articles 10 years ago, ..., articles 50 years ago ...
A thought experiment. With an energy budget of about 20 euro a day, could a current level AI/LLM without the moral boundaries make money _anywhere_? Would it start robbing, stealing, spamming, phishing, lying? Hey, that's what a subset of humans is doing right now! Would it start an AI porn site? Would it find niches for fully vibe coded SAAS-applications? If AI isn't there yet currenly, it should fail on every dimension (not just some!). For the sake of discussion (too instrumental for my moral taste), about 5-10%? of humans in my country are actively and solely supported by other people. I think current AI could beat that hurdle.