Artificial Intelligence and Economic Growth

Philippe Aghion, Benjamin Jones and Charles Jones

No 23928, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper examines the potential impact of artificial intelligence (A.I.) on economic growth. We model A.I. as the latest form of automation, a broader process dating back more than 200 years. Electricity, internal combustion engines, and semiconductors facilitated automation in the last century, but A.I. now seems poised to automate many tasks once thought to be out of reach, from driving cars to making medical recommendations and beyond. How will this affect economic growth and the division of income between labor and capital? What about the potential emergence of “singularities” and “superintelligence,” concepts that animate many discussions in the machine intelligence community? How will the linkages between A.I. and growth be mediated by firm-level considerations, including organization and market structure? The goal throughout is to refine a set of critical questions about A.I. and economic growth and to contribute to shaping an agenda for the field. One theme that emerges is based on Baumol’s “cost disease” insight: growth may be constrained not by what we are good at but rather by what is essential and yet hard to improve.

JEL-codes: O3 O4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-tid
Note: EFG PR
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (106)

Published as Artificial Intelligence and Economic Growth , Philippe Aghion, Benjamin F. Jones, Charles I. Jones. in The Economics of Artificial Intelligence: An Agenda , Agrawal, Gans, and Goldfarb. 2019

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w23928.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Chapter: Artificial Intelligence and Economic Growth (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23928

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w23928

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().