The new spring of artificial intelligence

Leading artificial intelligence (AI) expert Andrew Ng once characterised AI as "the new electricity" that will transform every sector of the economy (Ng 2017). However, we have had many cycles of hype and'winters' before with AI, which has been around since the 1950s. In recent research, we decided to assess how the new wave of AI is developing and have found evidence that a set of technologies may finally be blossoming, both technically and economically (Bughin et al., 2017). Our work also turned up additional factoids regarding two other issues heavily debated by economists: the evolution of total productivity growth (Crafts and Mills 2017), and the future of work (Frey and Osborne 2013, Autor 2015, Acemoglu and Restepo 2017). Our emerging messages are that AI is still in its infancy, but it is here to stay.