人工智能对全球经济的承诺（英）

SEPTEMBER 202423F&DProductivityAI’S PROMISE FOR THE GLOBAL ECONOMYMichael SpenceIf properly used, it could significantly accelerate economic growth and help productivity growth reboundThe postpandemic global economy is beset by slower growth, the most persistent inflation in decades, limited progress on sustainability, and high borrowing costs weighing on investment, including the massive investments needed for the energy tran-sition. Perhaps the strongest headwind, though, is sluggish productivity growth since the global financial crisis.AI is our best chance at relaxing the supply-side constraints that have contributed to slowing growth, new inflationary pressures, rising costs of capital, fiscal distress and declining fiscal space, and chal-lenges in meeting sustainability goals. And the rea-son is that AI has the potential not only to reverse the downward productivity trend, but over time to produce a major sustained surge in productivity.Of course it will take time. Roy Amara’s law applies here as in past episodes of technological transformation: we tend to overestimate the short-run impacts and underestimate the longer-term ones. My best guess (and it is just a guess, based on current patterns of investment) is that we may start to see meaningful impacts in labor productiv-ity by the end of this decade. All these things result from the collision of three powerful forces. The first is shocks, including war, pandemic, climate change, geopolitical tensions, resur-gent nationalism, and growing focus on national SEPTEMBER 202424F&DProductivitysecurity in the conduct of international economic policy. These increasingly severe and frequent disruptions are shifting global supply networks toward greater diversification and resilience. But that is an expensive pressure and a contributor to inflationary pressures.For example, Apple is steering more manufac-turing to India, which now produces 15 percent of iPhones. Meanwhile, only South Korea and Taiwan Province of China make (as opposed to design) the most advanced semiconductors, an unsustainable arrangement from a national secu-rity perspective. Diversification of sourcing is reinforced by policy initiatives aimed at bringing important supply chains back home, or at least to friendly countries, while denying adversaries access to goods, technology, and capital. Some of these protectionist policies are to protect domestic workers from foreign competition. The result is a rapid postpandemic fragmen-tation of global supply networks that were more cohesive in the postwar years. Supply chains then largely followed economic criteria: efficiency and comparative advantage. Now, it’s impossible to maximize resilience and minimize costs at the same time, and we are no longer minimizing costs. Among many factors, this structural shift has con-tributed to inflationary pressures. Secular trendsEven as pandemic supply-chain strains eased, a sec-ond set of colliding forces is embodied in secular trends that furt