Ox, Bees or Elephant? Three scenarios examining the socio-economic impacts of artificial intelligence on Thailand - The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU)

To support Thai policymakers in navigating this transition, the Institute of Public Policy and Development commissioned The Economist Intelligence Unit to conduct a foresight exercise that investigates how AI could affect key social and economic metrics in Thailand across three scenarios. In each of these scenarios, we have assumed that AI technology will substantially increase the use of computers and raise productivity. We focused our analysis on two critical and uncertain factors: the effectiveness of industrial policy and the extent of skills development in an AI-augmented economy. To better measure the magnitude of these impacts, we built an econometric model that forecasts four social and economic metrics to 2035: GDP growth, employment, productivity, and the relative importance of different sectors in the economy (industry, services and agriculture). We used qualitative analysis to build out our scenarios, considering the implications of AI and AI-assisted automation for specific sub-sectors of the economy, as well as wages, inequality, and social and political impacts.