AI as a new emerging technological paradigm: evidence from global patenting

Giacomo Damioli (), Vincent Van Roy, Daniel Vertesy () and Marco Vivarelli ()
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Daniel Vertesy: International Telecommunication Union, Geneva, Switzerland – UNU-MERIT, Maastricht, The Netherlands

No dipe0038, DISCE - Working Papers del Dipartimento di Politica Economica from Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Dipartimenti e Istituti di Scienze Economiche (DISCE)

Abstract: Artificial intelligence (AI) is emerging as a transformative innovation with the potential to drive significant economic growth and productivity gains. This study examines whether AI is initiating a technological revolution, signifying a new technological paradigm, using the perspective of evolutionary neo-Schumpeterian economics. Using a global dataset combining information on AI patenting activities and their applicants between 2000 and 2016, our analysis reveals that AI patenting has accelerated and substantially evolved in terms of its pervasiveness, with AI innovators shifting from the ICT core industries to non-ICT service industries over the investigated period. Moreover, there has been a decrease in concentration of innovation activities and a reshuffling in the innovative hierarchies, with innovative entries and young and smaller applicants driving this change. Finally, we find that AI technologies play a role in generating and accelerating further innovations (so revealing to be “enabling technologies”, a distinctive feature of GPTs). All these features have characterised the emergence of major technological paradigms in the past and suggest that AI technologies may indeed generate a paradigmatic shift.

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence; Technological Paradigm; Structural Change; Patents (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O31 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34
Date: 2024-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-eur, nep-hme, nep-ict and nep-sbm
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Working Paper: AI as a new emerging technological paradigm: evidence from global patenting (2024)
Working Paper: AI as a new emerging technological paradigm: evidence from global patenting (2024)
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