A technology that spreads through every industry. The scholarship on them finds that power and value go to whoever adopts them, not to whoever owns the frontier technique. Chapter 1.
From The AI Compute Race. Read the book
Where the book uses it
- Chapter 1 — The Stakes
What the race is for: the belief that a lead in AI can compound into a lasting advantage, how long such leads have actually lasted, and what a trillion dollars a year is being bet against.
Related terms
From the glossary of The AI Compute Race.
How to cite this page
Dryburgh, Lee S. “General-purpose technology.” In The AI Compute Race. DRYBURGH. https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/general-purpose-technology (accessed 2026-11-01).
BibTeX
@misc{dryburgh-general-purpose-technology-2026,
author = {Dryburgh, Lee S.},
title = {{General-purpose technology}},
howpublished = {In \emph{The AI Compute Race}, DRYBURGH},
year = {2026},
url = {https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/general-purpose-technology},
note = {Accessed 2026-11-01}
}