These are weird times. On the one hand, scientific and technological progress seem to be getting harder. Add to that slowing population growth, and it’s possible economic growth over the next century or two might slow to a halt. On the other hand, one area where we seem to be observing rapid technological progress is in artificial intelligence. If that goes far enough, it’s easy to imagine machines being able to do all the things human inventors and scientists do, possibly better than us. That would seem to pull in the opposite direction, leading to accelerating and possibly unbounded growth; a singularity.
Are those the only options? Is there a middle way? Under what conditions? This is an area where some economic theory can be illuminating. This article is bit unusual for New Things Under the Sun in that I am going to focus on a small but I think important part of a single 2019 article: “Artificial Intelligence and Economic Growth” by Aghion, Jones, and Jones. There are other papers on what happens to growth if we can automate parts of economic activity,undefined but Aghion, Jones, and Jones (2019) is useful because (among other things) it focuses on what happens in economic growth models if we automate the process of invention itself.
This podcast is an audio read through of the (initial draft of the) post What if we could automate invention?, originally published on New Things Under the Sun.
Articles Mentioned
Aghion, Philippe, Benjamin F. Jones, and Charles I. Jones. 2019. Artificial Intelligence and Economic Growth. In The Economics of Artificial Intelligence: An Agenda, ed. Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb. National Bureau of Economic Research. ISBN 978-0-226-61333-8