Ten Days That Didn’t Shake the World: Is it 1905 in AI Time?

**Andrew Keen** (0:00)
Hello, my name is Andrew Keen. Welcome to Keen On America, the daily interview show about the United States.
Hello, everybody, it's Saturday, the 11th of July, 2026 I'll probably put this out actually on the 12th of July. 2026 is turning into an interesting year in historical terms. Some people think of it as 1917, 1789, 1848, 1968, kind of big year where everything changes. And that's the theme of Keith Teare's, That Was The Week, newsletter this week. He asked what time it is specifically in terms of AI. And he notes that the AI economy has multiple clocks, just like history, Keith, in a way. Is that fair?

**Keith Teare** (1:15)
Yeah, I think of it as 1905, Andrew.

**Andrew Keen** (1:18)
Well, because of the failed Russian Revolution or the Russian-Japanese War?

**Keith Teare** (1:25)
Actually, both. They both were precursors to what happened for about the next, I don't know, 70 years.

**Andrew Keen** (1:33)
Well, let's remind everyone, not everyone is as historically literate as you, Keith. What happened in 1905?

**Keith Teare** (1:41)
There was a revolution in Russia against the Tsar from St. Petersburg that was partially successful, but ultimately failed. It's when the word Menshevik and Bolshevik emerged out of that, and the Russian-Japanese war was a background to that. It basically set in motion all the variables that led to the Russian Revolution, but it also prefigured World War I.
And that was the period just before it was obvious that the world was going to go through a transformation that resulted ultimately in American global leadership. But it took arguably 70 years, 70 or so years for that to play out. Well, AI is at that very formative moment, I think. It looked out from a long time.

**Andrew Keen** (2:40)
So I take your point. I mean, you will talk about these multiple clocks that you lay out in your editorial. But why 1905 when it comes to our current moment? Is it because we're expecting radical change and we're not getting it?

**Keith Teare** (3:00)
I think it's not visible yet. So in a way, I do actually think we are getting radical change. But only a small number of people are experiencing what's possible. It is not generalized through the economy yet. It isn't rolled out or deployed as that clock says in the middle section. So I'm definitely experiencing it. I suspect you're experiencing it.
This week, both OpenAI and Anthropic rolled out an upgraded version of work. They call it work or co-work in the case of Anthropic, which is all about making it useful to you in what you need to get done every day.
And so it really is a very early stage of being fully formed.

**Andrew Keen** (3:50)
Yeah. And it's interesting. One of the pieces you linked to this week in your newsletter is something from The Wall Street Journal. I'm quoting the headline, The Socialist Temptation of Sam Altman. So your 1905 analogy metaphor is an interesting one. Is the AI economy, Keith, being tempted? The Wall Street Journal is always telling us about the socialist temptation of somebody or other.
Is our old friend Sam Altman, Slippery Sam, as I like to think of him, is he really being tempted by socialism or is he tempting us with socialism?

**Keith Teare** (4:35)
I must admit, socialism is a word I've grown to hate because in the American context...

**Andrew Keen** (4:43)
As an old communist, that's quite a confession, Keith.

**Keith Teare** (4:47)
Well, I even hated it then. That's why I was a communist, not a socialist. But socialism really in American context, and European listeners will maybe not appreciate this, simply means the capitalist state. It means that the state does more. This word socialist has lost all historical meaning and has become Americanized. What Sam Altman is doing is suggesting that the state should own 5 percent of OpenAI.
That's what's called the socialist temptation. Of course, it's not socialist at all. It's entirely capitalist.

**Andrew Keen** (5:26)
Well, it's what Bernie Sanders and the left of the Democratic Party would describe themselves as democratic socialist. Some people would say you can't have your cake and eat it, but they say you can.

**Keith Teare** (5:42)
Yeah, look, clearly these words of, you're historically literate, Andrew. You must appreciate as I do that these words have a completely new meaning and have been ripped out of their original context. So democratic socialist simply means a capitalist politician that wants more state intervention in the economy.
That, of course, isn't socialist. Socialism was historically understood to be, and I quote, the first phase of communism.

**Andrew Keen** (6:14)
Well, that's according to the communists. But anyway, I mean, we don't want to get it. But there was a debate for 50 years on the left about whether you could have socialism in a capitalist context or not. But this is a show. It was supposed to be a show, Keith, and I blame myself for this, for going down this road on tech rather than politics. So, sorry, Graham.