The Economics of Artificial Intelligence Today

Every day we hear claims that Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems are about to transform the economy, creating mass unemployment and vast monopolies. But what do professional economists think about this? Economists have been studying the relationship between technological change, productivity and employment since the beginning of the discipline with Adam Smith's pin factory. It should therefore not come as a surprise that AI systems able to behave appropriately in a growing number of situations - from driving cars to detecting tumours in medical scans - have caught their attention. In September 2017, a group of distinguished economists gathered in Toronto to set out a research agenda for the Economics of Artificial Intelligence (AI).