The Great Diffusion

Technologies like electricity and indoor plumbing didn’t just raise productivity in existing tasks — they enabled entirely new industries and everyday life changes that GDP‑style TAM math would have missed in their early years. Applied to AI, this suggests modest short‑run TAM multipliers can hide a century‑scale remaking of what economies and households do. — If AI follows a 'great diffusion' path, short‑term task‑level estimates will understate its long‑run social, economic, and political effects, changing how we should regulate, invest, and prepare labor markets.