AI + Economics

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Alan D. Thompson
March 2023

Table of papers specifically addressing economic impacts of post-2020 AI. Most recent at top.

Date Author Title Highlight Source
14/Jun/2023 McKinsey The economic potential of generative AI: The next productivity frontier ‘…generative AI could add the equivalent of $2.6 trillion to $4.4 trillion annually across the 63 use cases we analyzed—by comparison, the United Kingdom’s entire GDP in 2021 was $3.1 trillion.’ link
27/Mar/2023 Goldman Sachs The Potentially Large Effects of Artificial Intelligence on Economic Growth [Note, this report is ultra-conservative -Alan] ‘…at the high end of the forecasts, we would be talking about GDP growth of about 4.5 percent…’ Full paper: The Memo
17/Mar/2023 OpenAI GPTs are GPTs: An Early Look at the Labor Market Impact Potential of Large Language Models Low-quality paper.

Most occupations exhibit some degree of exposure to language models.

arxiv.org
27/Feb/2023 Resume Builder 1 in 4 companies have already replaced workers with ChatGPT – 48% of companies using ChatGPT say it’s replaced workers
– 25% companies using ChatGPT have already saved $75k+
– 93% of current users say they plan to expand their use of ChatGPT
link
Feb/2023 NBER (US) Language Models and Cognitive Automation for Economic Research ‘…with enough compute, sufficiently advanced AI systems may be able to produce and articulate superior economic models, and the cognitive work of human economistslike that of all other researchers may eventually become redundant.’ PDF
Dec/2022 Whitehouse The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on the Future of Workforces in The European Union and the United States of America ‘AI has the potential to automate “nonroutine” tasks, exposing large new swaths of the workforce to potential disruption.’ PDF
May/2022 Prof Stuart Russell If We Succeed ‘…an almost tenfold increase in global GDP, from $76 trillion to $750 trillion per year. The increased income stream resulting from this achievement has a net present value of $13.5 quadrillion, assuming a discount factor of 5 percent. (The value is $9.4 quadrillion or $6.8 quadrillion if the technology is phased in over ten or twenty years.) These numbers tower over the amounts currently invested in AI research, and momentum toward this goal will increase as technical advances bring general-purpose AI closer to realization.’ MIT
Apr/2022 OpenAI DALL·E 2 Preview – Risks and Limitations See below… GitHub
Jan/2022 ARK Invest Annual Research Report (Big Ideas 2022) ‘Our research suggests that by 2030 AI will increase the output of knowledge workers by 140%… By 2030, artificial intelligence is likely to boost the output of global knowledge workers by 9% at an annual rate, from $41 trillion in expected human labor output to roughly $97 trillion in AI + human output.’ PDF

OpenAI on DALL-E 2:

[Text-to-image models like the DALL-E 2 model] may eventually have significant economic implications. The model may increase the efficiency of performing some tasks like photo editing or production of stock photography which could displace jobs of designers, photographers, models, editors, and artists. At the same time it may make possible new forms of artistic production, by performing some tasks quickly and cheaply…

Finally, access to the model is currently given to a limited number of users, many of whom are selected from OpenAI employees’ networks. While commercial use is not currently allowed, simply having access to an exclusive good can have indirect effects and real commercial value. For example, people may establish online followings based on their use of the technology, or develop and explore new ideas that have commercial value without using generations themselves. Moreover, if commercial access is eventually granted, those who have more experience using and building with the technology may have first mover advantage – for example, they may have more time to develop better prompt engineering techniques.


Image generated by Alan D. Thompson via Midjourney v5 on 25/Mar/2023. Prompt: ‘new and unique executive summary report cover for an intergovernmental organization (like the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), European Union, UN, or Commonwealth) augmented by AI, real gold on white background –v 5 –aspect 3:2’

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Dr Alan D. Thompson is an AI expert and consultant, advising Fortune 500s and governments on post-2020 large language models. His work on artificial intelligence has been featured at NYU, with Microsoft AI and Google AI teams, at the University of Oxford’s 2021 debate on AI Ethics, and in the Leta AI (GPT-3) experiments viewed more than 4.5 million times. A contributor to the fields of human intelligence and peak performance, he has held positions as chairman for Mensa International, consultant to GE and Warner Bros, and memberships with the IEEE and IET. Technical highlights.

This page last updated: 14/Aug/2023. https://lifearchitect.ai/economics/