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Machines of Mind
Report

Machines of Mind

The Case for an AI-Powered Productivity Boom

Martin Neil Baily, Erik Brynjolfsson and Anton Korinek
Brookings Institution, 2023
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8

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Artificial intelligence (AI) is a transformative agent for businesses, governments and economies. At the core of this upheaval lies a potential surge in productivity that could spark a robust worldwide expansion of economic activity. Scholars Martin Neil Baily, Erik Brynjolfsson and Anton Korinek analyze AI’s implications for long-term productivity growth and its impact on labor utilization, income disparities and wealth concentration. Executives, entrepreneurs and investors will find this an insightful though academic look at AI’s emerging economic effects.

Summary

Artificial intelligence (AI) will dramatically increase worker productivity in coming decades. 

AI will prove to be a catalyst for gains in the global economy. Experts note that the primary driver of this expansion will be a resurgence in worker productivity growth, which has been static at 1.5% over the period from 2005 to 2022. This is roughly half the productivity growth seen in the years from 1948 to 1973 and from 1995 to 2005. Productivity, as measured by “the amount of output created per hour worked,” is a fundamental component of economic dynamism over time.

The functionalities and uses of AI are proliferating rapidly. The most common application in the marketplace is generative AI, which feeds into “total factor productivity...

About the Authors

Martin Neil Baily is a senior fellow emeritus in economic studies at the Brooking Institution’s Center on Regulation and Markets, where Anton Korinek is a fellow. Erik Brynjolfsson is the director of the Stanford Digital Economy Lab and a professor at the Stanford Institute for Human Centered AI.

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