Sedona, AZ — Let me ask you a simple question: Is artificial intelligence something entirely new?
It certainly feels that way. It feels destabilizing, even unsettling—as if something fundamental beneath our economy and our lives is shifting. Jobs that once seemed secure suddenly feel fragile. Skills that took years to learn can now be replicated in seconds by a machine. It feels unprecedented.
But the deeper truth is this: we have been here before.
Not once, but many times. For at least a thousand years, technology has repeatedly reshaped work, displaced workers, concentrated power, and forced societies to adapt. If you draw a straight line from the medieval steel plow to artificial intelligence, the pattern becomes clear. History doesn’t repeat itself exactly—but it rhymes. And right now, the rhyme is getting louder.
The first great productivity shock came in medieval Europe. In the 10th century, farmers in northern Europe struggled with dense, wet clay soil that primitive wooden plows couldn’t effectively turn. Much of the land remained difficult to farm, limiting food production and keeping populations small.
Then came the heavy iron moldboard plow.
This new tool could cut deep into the soil, turning it over and making previously unusable land fertile. The result was extraordinary. Food production increased dramatically. Populations grew. Villages expanded into towns, and towns grew into cities. The plow didn’t eliminate work—it multiplied output. But when output multiplied, land became more valuable. And when land became more valuable, ownership became more contested, more political, and more concentrated.
Efficiency created wealth—but it also reshaped power.
This shift helped drive another profound change: enclosure. In medieval England, much of the land had been held in common, shared by villagers who farmed and grazed animals collectively. Over time, however, landowners began fencing off these shared spaces, privatizing them to raise sheep. Wool had become highly profitable, and sheep required fewer workers than crops.
Efficiency favored sheep over people.
Peasants who had worked the land for generations suddenly found themselves displaced. They hadn’t become less capable or less willing. They had simply become unnecessary to the new, more efficient system. Forced off the land, they migrated into towns, seeking work. Over time, this displaced population would become the labor force that powered the Industrial Revolution.
Technology increased productivity. Policy concentrated ownership. Workers absorbed the shock.
The pattern repeated itself with even greater force in the 19th century, during the rise of industrial manufacturing. Skilled textile workers who had spent years mastering their craft found themselves competing with machines like the spinning jenny and the power loom. These machines could produce cloth faster and cheaper than human hands.
Wages collapsed. Livelihoods evaporated.
Some workers responded by destroying the machines that were replacing them. We remember them today as Luddites, often portrayed as irrational opponents of progress. But they weren’t afraid of technology itself. They were reacting to the sudden loss of economic security and social stability. They were watching power shift—from skilled labor to industrial capital.
Factories created immense wealth, but that wealth was unevenly distributed. It took decades of unrest, organizing, and political struggle before societies responded with labor laws, unions, and basic protections.
Again, the same rhythm: productivity rose, ownership concentrated, and workers bore the disruption.
The pattern appeared once more in the 20th century, this time on farms. In 1900, roughly 40 percent of Americans worked in agriculture. Farming was the backbone of the economy and the center of daily life for millions. But mechanization—tractors, combine harvesters, and automated irrigation—transformed farming into something radically more efficient.
One farmer could now do the work of dozens.
Food became abundant and inexpensive. But farming as a widespread occupation largely disappeared. By the late 20th century, fewer than 2 percent of Americans worked in agriculture. The workers themselves didn’t vanish, of course. They moved. They went to factories, to cities, to offices, and eventually into the modern service and technology economy.
Each wave of technology displaced workers—but it also created new sectors that absorbed them.
Until now, perhaps.
What makes artificial intelligence feel different is not that it replaces human effort—that has always been true. What feels different is what it replaces. Previous technological revolutions primarily replaced physical labor. AI replaces cognitive labor. It writes reports, analyzes data, generates designs, drafts legal arguments, and produces software. It performs tasks that once required education, training, and specialized expertise.
It is not just replacing muscle. It is replacing thinking.
The modern knowledge economy—the very system that absorbed workers displaced by industrial automation—may now itself be subject to automation. Programmers, designers, marketers, analysts, and even executives are beginning to encounter tools that can perform parts of their work faster and cheaper.
The pattern is the same—but it has climbed the skill ladder.
Across a thousand years, the rhythm has remained remarkably consistent. New technology increases productivity. Ownership and profits tend to concentrate among those who control the technology. Workers are displaced and forced to adapt. Eventually, society responds with new systems, new institutions, and new forms of work. But that adjustment is rarely immediate. It often comes after disruption, instability, and hardship.
The challenge has never been innovation itself. Innovation is inevitable. The real challenge has always been managing the transition—deciding who bears the cost and who captures the gain.
Artificial intelligence will almost certainly increase productivity. It will generate wealth. It will eliminate some roles while transforming others. The question is not whether technology will advance. History shows that it always does.
The real question is whether we will manage its human consequences differently this time.
Will we repeat the familiar pattern—where workers absorb the shock first, and reform comes later, after damage has been done? Or will we anticipate the disruption and build systems that distribute the benefits more broadly from the beginning?
The steel plow reshaped Europe. The factory reshaped labor. The tractor reshaped America. Artificial intelligence may reshape the knowledge economy.
The pattern is ancient.
The speed is new.
Technology will move forward. It always has. It always will.
The only open question is whether this technological revolution will follow the old script—or whether, for the first time, society will prepare itself before displacement becomes crisis.
That is not a technical decision.
It is a civic one.
And history, as always, is watching. Growth and exploitation are the two wheels capitalism, AI could be the deaths of both.
