An Underestimated Analogy
Many people believe the development of AI can be compared to the invention of computers. This analogy sounds reasonable—computers changed the world, AI is changing the world, so AI is the "next generation of computers."
But Jensen Huang has a viewpoint that I find quite enlightening: such an analogy may vastly underestimate AI's impact.
Why? Consider these numbers first.
The global IT industry is approximately 100 trillion. No matter how powerful computers are, they remain fundamentally tools—excellent tools, but ultimately in service of humans. You need people to write code, operate systems, and maintain servers for computers to function. Thus, after decades of development, the IT industry operates within that $1 trillion sphere.
AI agents are different. As agent technology gradually matures, they cease to be mere tools assisting humans; they can deliver results directly without human intervention. This means the AI industry isn't competing with traditional IT for that 99 trillion of production activities—those tasks previously accomplishable only by human labor.
This represents a qualitative shift.
A New Mode of Economic Transformation
If we follow this logic further, we discover a deeper transformation underway.
In traditional economic models, converting capital into output inevitably requires substantial human labor as an intermediary. You have capital; you must hire, train, and manage people; then people execute to produce goods. Thus, the productivity transformation chain has always been: capital → labor → output.
But AI is rewriting this chain. When capital is invested in computing power, electricity, and models, it can transform directly into productive forces to a considerable extent, without requiring such extensive human labor intervention. This will catalyze an entirely new economic model and production relations—the role of capital becomes significantly amplified.
Historically, impacts of this magnitude are rare. In agrarian societies, productive forces depended primarily on land and labor, leaving little room for capital. After the Industrial Revolution, machinery multiplied capital efficiency, yet you still needed large workforces to operate and maintain machines. Now, AI may enable capital to convert almost directly into output.
To say AI is the next computer? A more accurate analogy is the steam engine—perhaps even surpassing it. The Industrial Revolution took a century to reshape the world; the AI revolution may compress this process into a decade.
Choices at the Crest
As capital's power becomes further amplified, the ensuing questions become quite practical.
Historically, every leap in productivity has been accompanied by transformations in governance. Steam engines brought factory systems and labor laws; electricity spawned modern corporate governance; the internet propelled data privacy legislation. For this AI wave, what is the corresponding governance framework? There is no answer yet.
Marx's extrapolation in Das Kapital regarding the unlimited expansion of capital has been mitigated by various institutional designs over the past century. But if AI truly diminishes the necessity of human labor in production, will those previous balancing mechanisms remain adequate? This is not a distant philosophical question, but a practical challenge unfolding now.
In 2026, we may indeed stand at the crest of a transformation unseen in a century. This is not alarmist—when a technology simultaneously alters the source of productive forces and the structure of production relations, its impact extends far beyond the technical domain.
As industry participants, I believe understanding the depth of this transformation matters more than chasing any specific technical trend. Tools iterate, frameworks update, but the restructuring of production relations may occur only once per century.