Ethan Mollick 引用《Rise and Fall of American Growth》谈 AI 乐观前景
Mollick 拿一本讲美国经济增长史的书来聊 AI，视角很特别：1870 到 1920 年美国从没有下水道到全面电气化，之后 50 年生活水平再没跳过那么高。读完后你会重新理解 AI 可能带来的量级变化。
宾夕法尼亚大学沃顿商学院教授 Ethan Mollick 在 X 上分享了他对 AI 未来最欣赏的一种乐观视角，出处是一本非 AI 主题的著作《Rise and Fall of American Growth》。该书认为 1870 到 1920 年的 50 年间，美国完成了城市管道、电力照明、中央供暖等基础改造，随后 50 年又出现现代医学、航空和电信，作者称之为“Special Century”。
这本书指出 1970 年代以后，人类生活方式再没出现过同等规模的变化，并据此在 2016 年判断类似爆发恐怕不会重现。Mollick 认为 AI 的乐观之处正在于重新打开这个假设：如果又一次“Special Century”级别的生活水平跃升真的会发生，关键问题是如何让它顺利实现。
A favorite optimistic view of the future of AI is from a pessimistic book that not about AI: "Rise and Fall of American Growth," which argues that we had a one-time explosion in living standards from 1870 and 1920 (& later outside the US).
In 1870: no toilets, no city plumbing, lamp light, no central heating, little public health, horses for local travel, etc. In 50 years, all of this was solved & the nation was electrified. In the next fifty modern medicine, air travel and telecommunication happened.
The book then points out that we have had no changes in lifestyle of similar scale since the 1970s. Written in 2016, it argued that we would likely never experience another boom like the "Special Century." The positive view of AI should make us ask "But what if we do?" and "How do we make it all go right?"
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信源核验说明：本文原始线索采编自「Ethan Mollick」（@emollick），经 AITOP 多维评分管线结构化提炼。
