Recent progress in artificial intelligence (AI) – a general purpose technology affecting many industries - has been focused on advances in machine learning, which we recast as a quality-adjusted drop in the price of prediction. How will this sharp drop in price impact society? Policy will influence the impact on two key dimensions: diffusion and consequences. First, in addition to subsidies and IP policy that will influence the diffusion of AI in ways similar to their effect on other technologies, three policy categories - privacy, trade, and liability - may be uniquely salient in their influence on the diffusion patterns of AI. Second, labor and antitrust policies will influence the consequences of AI in terms of employment, inequality, and competition.
Authors
- Acknowledgements & Disclosure
- Thanks to participants at the 2017 NBER Conference on the Economics of Artificial Intelligence and at the 2018 NBER Innovation Policy and the Economy Conference for ideas and comments. We thank the Sloan Foundation for financial support of the NBER Economics of Artificial Intelligence initiative. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Joshua S. Gans I work with the Creative Destruction Lab that advises start-ups some of who are investing in artificial intelligence.
- DOI
- http://dx.doi.org/10.3386/w24690
- Published in
- United States of America
