Shira Inbar

Is A.I. increasing productivity?

Many big companies have adopted generative A.I. to deal with annoying tasks, beef up their marketing pushes or match prices to demand. And enthusiastic tech investors have added trillions in market value to a few firms.

But the research on A.I. and efficiency is still shaky. Many economists and officials seem dubious that A.I. has spread enough to show up in productivity data already. Others, like the M.I.T. labor economist David Autor, say it could potentially increase the size of the middle class by allowing workers to perform some tasks that currently require highly skilled experts.