Yes it was possible. Steel was also available before the industrial revolution... but guess what, it's called a revolution for reason? It become cheap enough to upend preexisting social status quo. It was a social phase transition caused by technology.

We're dealing with a very nascent AI revolution right now. A social phase transition has already started: on the forefront there are graphic artists (midjourney v5 is literally revolutionizing the industry as we speak) and NLP researchers (GPT-4 has reduced the need for applied NLP to basically zero), but it's only a start. The cheapness and availability changes everything.