Artificial Intelligence And Big Data: Good For Innovation?

China's 19-year-old Go player Ke Jie reacts during the second match against Google's artificial intelligence programme AlphaGo in Wuzhen, eastern China's Zhejiang province on May 25, 2017. Artificial intelligence is firmly embedded throughout the economy. Financial services firms use it to provide investment advice to customers, automakers are using it in vehicle autopilot systems, technology companies are using it to create virtual assistants like Alexa and Siri, and retailers are using artificial intelligence (AI) together with customers' prior sales histories, to predict potential purchases in the future, to name but a few examples. The potential of AI to boost economic growth has been discussed in numerous forums, including by Accenture, the Council on Foreign Relations, the McKinsey Global Institute, the World Economic Forum, and President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, among others. The most dramatic advances in AI are coming from a data-intensive technique known as machine learning.