A childhood spent in Jamaica left a lasting impression—an island bursting with energy, unpredictable and full of life. That same person also grew up fascinated by technology, starting with a Sinclair Spectrum computer before moving on to website design and teaching graphic design. By their early twenties, they worked at a British newspaper, where the physical process of print production—the careful layout of pages, the satisfaction of watching ink dry—felt like a craft rather than just a job.
Years later, that person still buys newspapers on Sundays, a habit that now feels both comforting and strange. The stores sell out as they always have, but the underlying question persists: Are newspapers simply selling fewer copies, or is the very act of reading them fading away? The answer matters less than the transformation happening beneath the surface. Institutions endure, but the foundation they stand on shifts.
How revolutions arrive unnoticed
Google did not declare the end of the old world when it launched. It was simply a search tool, fast, efficient, and practical. YouTube and Gmail followed, each appearing as just another utility before fundamentally altering how people communicated, marketed themselves, and stored memories. The transition lacked a clear starting point. It unfolded gradually: more searches replaced letters, fewer phone numbers were memorized, and old habits faded without fanfare.
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Artificial intelligence may be entering society in the same way, except at a far greater speed. The stakes are higher, the claims bolder. Some investors compare it to the next major economic shift after the internet. Critics warn of a speculative frenzy with uncertain returns. Others fear AI could displace jobs or, in extreme cases, threaten human survival. The uncertainty is so intense that even basic choices, whether to invest, prepare, or retreat, become paralyzing.
The speculative frenzy and the advancing technology
The argument that AI represents a bubble has credible evidence. The Bank for International Settlements projects that the five largest tech firms will invest over $1 trillion in AI-related capital expenditures during 2025 and 2026. These funds are directed toward chips, data centers, power infrastructure, and the networks connecting them. Some of this spending outpaces current earnings and cash flow, meaning companies may need to borrow heavily to sustain it.
A separate BIS study concluded that competition between AI companies could generate investment approximately 50 per cent above the socially efficient level under its baseline assumptions. Each company fears being left behind, so everyone builds at once. That is how a technological race can become an investment stampede. The warning signs are familiar: enormous valuations, extravagant promises and companies attaching “AI” to products that previously managed perfectly well without it. During a gold rush, even an ordinary shovel acquires an ambitious marketing department.
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Yet a speculative surge in investment does not negate the technology’s potential. The 19th-century railway boom collapsed many businesses but left behind enduring networks. The dot-com crash destroyed highly valued companies, but it did not destroy the internet. Instead, the internet continued to spread until it became part of almost every serious business. AI could follow the same course. Many companies may fail. Investors may lose astonishing sums. Some data centers could become expensive monuments to excessive optimism. The underlying technology could nevertheless remain and permanently alter economic life. The bubble and the revolution can exist at the same time.
There is now sufficient evidence that AI is more than a passing trend. Generative AI can draft documents, translate languages, produce computer code, examine records, create images and help customer-service teams manage large volumes of inquiries. Stanford’s AI Index reports that adoption has spread with exceptional speed, even if organisations remain far less prepared to govern the technology than they are to purchase it.
Research organisation METR measures the length of tasks that advanced AI systems can complete independently. Its work indicates that the task-completion “time horizon” of leading systems has been doubling approximately every seven months. That finding should not be mistaken for proof that a machine can replace an experienced professional. Completing a controlled software task is not the same as managing a complicated building project, advising a vulnerable family or understanding the nuances of human relationships.
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METR’s findings also include a critical caveat: In tests with experienced software developers, those using AI took about 19% longer to complete certain tasks, even though they believed the tool had improved their efficiency.
What endures when technology advances
Not everything displaced by technology vanishes completely. A market stall once sold CDs to fund an education; now those discs collect dust, but the music they carried remains. The same may happen with newspapers. While digital consumption rises, some readers still value the physical weight of a paper, the absence of algorithmic tracking, or the ritual of a Sunday morning read.
A photographer who received a copy of the Jamaica Observer in 2022 described how its layout preserved the texture of local news in ways online articles could not: the ink’s smell, the way headlines stood out against newsprint, the unhurried act of reading without digital interruptions. Even as AI reshapes industries, such tactile experiences persist, not because they are immune to change, but because they offer something digital tools cannot replicate.
