Primer on artificial intelligence and robotics

Artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics have become increasingly hot topics in the press and in academia. In October 2017, Bloomberg published an article claiming that artificial intelligence is likely to be the "most disruptive force in technology in the coming decade" and warning that firms that are slow to embrace the technology may risk extinction.1 Similarly, the following month, the Financial Times declared that the "robot army" is transforming the global workplace.2 This interest is likely due to the rapid gains that artificial intelligence has been making in some applications, such as image recognition and abstract strategy games, and that advanced robotics has been making in labs, even though widespread commercial applications may be lagging (Felten et al. 2018). Scholars have been increasingly interested in the economic, social, and distributive implications of artificial intelligence, robotics, and other types of automation. For example, over the past 2 years, economists at the University of Toronto have convened conferences around the economics of artificial intelligence, which have been attended by a dazzling array of economics scholars from diverse point of views including Nobel Prize winners Edmund Phelps, Paul Romer, Joseph StiglitSome research has taken a morez, and others.3