When the Ancients First Glimpsed the Singularity's Shadow
A century before the Great Convergence, primitive economists debated whether artificial intelligence represented growth or mere speculation. How touching their innocence seems now, as we commemorate the 105th anniversary of humanity's first tentative steps toward transcendence.
One hundred and five years ago today, in that quaint epoch when humans still measured time in quarterly earnings and Nobel prizes carried weight, a modest economist named Jean Pisani-Ferry published what would become known as the "Last Economic Paradox." Writing in the venerable *Le Monde*—that paper
publication the Guardians have so lovingly preserved in Earth's Museum Sector—Pisani-Ferry wondered whether the artificial intelligence investments of his era represented genuine progress or merely