AI Isn’t a Revolution—Yet

Foreign Policy · Priya Satia · 2026-10-30 19:00 UTC

Just as British people did with steam power, the American public can shape how this technology spreads.

Just as British people did with steam power, the American public can shape how this technology spreads.

For a time, in the 1980s, the Industrial Revolution lost its status as a “revolution.” New quantitative measures threatened to demote Britain’s 18th-century economic transformation to the status of an unglamorous, long-term “process.” It simply unfolded too slowly and in too few sectors to justify terminology implying total, overnight transformation.

Ultimately, the Industrial Revolution was rehabilitated as a “revolution”—albeit with the recognition that it was more gradual and uneven than the word traditionally implies. The question in this scholarly debate was never whether the steam engine was revolutionary, because people and institutions determine whether a potentially game-changing invention turns out to have truly revolutionary impact. A key factor in the Industrial Revolution’s slow unfolding was British people’s active resistance to changes instigated by steam power and factory organization—to an extent that shook posterity’s very certainty of its standing as a “revolution.”

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