Every policy debate over AI revolves around the same question, which was so brilliantly framed by a 2025 essay: Is AI a “normal technology”?

That is, is it the latest in a long lineage of general purpose technologies that change the world without being “the end of…” something (…of jobs, of technological progress, of the human species)

I wrote about how this question is shaping everything from the AGI debate to White House trade policy, and where I come down on the Normal Question