Artificial intelligence can transform the economy

After half a century of hype and false starts, artificial intelligence may finally be starting to transform the U.S. economy. An example is machine translation, as we found when analyzing eBay's deployment in 2014 of an AI-based tool that learned to translate by digesting millions of lines of eBay data and data from the Web. The aim is to allow eBay sellers and buyers in different countries to more easily connect with one another. The tool detects the location of an eBay user's Internet Protocol address in, say, a Spanish-speaking country and automatically translates the English title of the eBay offering. After eBay unveiled its English-Spanish translator for search queries and item titles, exports on eBay from the United States to Latin America increased by more than 17 percent.