Introduction
Artificial intelligence (AI) stands out as a potentially-transformative general-purpose technology (GPT). Like electricity or the internet before it, its potential lies not in any single application but its capacity to reshape entire production processes, business models and economic structures across the economy.
The AI technological frontier has advanced at a remarkable pace, progressing from narrow machine-learning systems capable of pattern recognition to large language models and generative AI platforms that can perform complex cognitive tasks. And the frontier keeps shifting. With agentic AI, the technology may increasingly act as an independent economic agent rather than a technology that merely augments human effort.
What distinguishes AI from earlier revolutionary technologies is its scope. Previous general-purpose technologies, from steam power to electrification to information and communications technology, primarily raised the productivity of goods and services production by making already-existing processes faster and cheaper. But AI has the potential to also raise the productivity of the innovation process itself. AI systems can meaningfully accelerate scientific discovery, shorten research and development cycles, and compress the time between knowledge creation and commercial application. The technology is set to not just shift the level of productive capacity but shift the rate at which productive capacity grows.
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