This report explores the implications for firms, nations and geopolitics of the era we are entering, when capital, through microchips, can both enhance and sometimes substitute for human intellect. It also explodes certain misconceptions about what fields generative AI will impact. It looks at how AI will underpin fundamental research into almost every other cutting-edge technology likely to shape economic development in the next two decades. Finally, it ends by considering AI as a general-purpose technology and, drawing on ships' transition from sails to steam, derives seven potential lessons for a world in which capital, through microchips, buys intellect.