Earlier this month, Brookings Metro published a data-driven snapshot of the growth and geography of the emerging artificial intelligence (AI) economy in the United States. Employing seven basic measures of AI research and commercial activity, the report benchmarked U.S. metropolitan areas on the basis of their core AI assets and capabilities as they stand now. Here, we look at the report's most important takeaways through five charts. The AI industry is growing rapidly, with AI-related projects accounting for a substantially larger share of federal research and development expenditures at U.S. colleges and universities. Similarly, newly founded firms that provide AI solutions of all tech startups expanded to more than 5%, from less than 1% a decade ago.

Much of the U.S. artificial intelligence (AI) discussion revolves around futuristic dreams of both utopia and dystopia. However, it bears remembering that AI is also becoming a real-world economic fact with major implications for national and regional economic development as the U.S. crawls out of the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on advanced uses of statistics, algorithms, and fast computer processing, AI has become a focal point of U.S. innovation debates. Even more, AI is increasingly viewed as the next great "general purpose technology"--one that has the power to boost the productivity of sector after sector of the economy. All of which is why state and city leaders are increasingly assessing AI for its potential to spur economic growth.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has generated increasing interest in "future of work" discussions in recent years as the technology has achieved superhuman performance in a range of valuable tasks, ranging from manufacturing to radiology to legal contracts. With that said, though, it has been difficult to get a specific read on AI's implications on the labor market. In part because the technologies have not yet been widely adopted, previous analyses have had to rely either on case studies or subjective assessments by experts to determine which occupations might be susceptible to a takeover by AI algorithms. What's more, most research has concentrated on an undifferentiated array of "automation" technologies including robotics, software, and AI all at once. The result has been a lot of discussion--but not a lot of clarity--about AI, with prognostications that range from the utopian to the apocalyptic.