Could machine learning be a general purpose technology? A comparison of emerging technologies using data from online job postings

There has been a great deal of speculation that machine learning might be a general purpose technology. Many other emerging technologies receive similar speculation. However, general purpose technologies are typically identified with the benefit of many years of hindsight. For managers deciding on technology strategy, this classification will come too late. In this paper, we provide an approach to assessing the likelihood that a technology is general purpose before it has widely diffused, so that the classification can be used to inform technology strategy decisions. Using data from online job postings, we compare several emerging technologies in terms of breadth of industries and the importance and breadth of research roles. Our results show that machine learning and related data science technologies are relatively likely to be general purpose.