The Economics of Artificial Intelligence: An Agenda

Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) highlight its potential to affect productivity, growth, inequality, market power, innovation, and employment. This volume seeks to set the agenda for economic research on the impact of AI. Its focus is on the economic impact of machine learning, a branch of computational statistics that has driven the recent excitement around AI. The chapters also examine key questions on the economic impact of robotics and automation, as well as the potential economic consequences of a still-hypothetical artificial general intelligence. The volume covers four broad themes: AI as a general purpose technology; the relationship between AI, growth, jobs, and inequality; regulatory responses to changes brought on by AI; and the effects of AI on the way economic research is conducted. In featuring these themes, the volume provides several frameworks for understanding the economic impact of AI. It identifies a number of key open research questions in a variety of research areas.