What the Roaring Twenties Can Teach Us About AI

When I think about AI, I have mixed feelings. As a college student, it seems like every week there is a new headline about jobs being automated or entire industries being transformed. It's exciting, but it's also hard not to wonder what the job market will look like by the time my classmates and I graduate.

One of the main arguments of the “half-cup full” crowd is that we have been through such profound change during the 1920s and we not only survived but flourished in the aftermath. At first, the comparison felt strange. What do automobiles, radios, and electricity have in common with AI? However, the more I thought about it, the more it made sense.

People living through the Roaring Twenties felt many of the same anxieties we feel today. Cars changed social norms. Radio reshaped entertainment. Electrification transformed daily life. New technologies were arriving so quickly that many people worried society was changing too fast. Critics argued that traditional values were disappearing and that these inventions would create more problems than benefits.

Yet looking back, we know how much those innovations improved people's lives. The automobile didn't just create factory jobs. It created demand for mechanics, gas stations, road construction, restaurants, and countless other businesses. Electrification led to new appliances, industries, and conveniences that people could barely imagine beforehand.

That doesn't mean the transition was easy. Many jobs disappeared, just as some jobs may disappear because of AI. But history suggests that technological revolutions tend to create opportunities alongside disruption. The challenge is that those opportunities are often impossible to predict in advance.

Similarly, early automobiles and airplanes were incredibly dangerous compared to today. Over time, governments, businesses, and society developed regulations and standards that made these technologies much safer. That gives me some optimism about AI. The technology may be moving quickly, but history shows that society is capable of adapting.

As students, we don't know exactly what the future will look like. AI may change many of the careers we are preparing for today. But the people living through the 1920s didn't know how their story would end either. They were simply experiencing a period of rapid change.

The biggest lesson is that uncertainty is not new. Every generation thinks it is living through unprecedented disruption. Sometimes that is true. But history shows that people are often more adaptable than they realize. Instead of trying to predict every twist and turn of the AI revolution, it may be more important to stay curious, keep learning, and be willing to adapt as new opportunities emerge.