Turns out, computers, AI and robots aren’t improving productivity after all
Stockholm — Economists, politicians and business leaders are all singing the praise of computers, artificial intelligence (AI) and robots. But are these really revolutionising the economy? There does not seem to be much evidence of this so far, according to Roger Josefsson, an economist with the Swedish data firm Macrobond. It was "the modern productivity paradox", he wrote recently in his blog. The lack of productivity growth over the past 10 to 15 years has been a hot topic of discussion. Investment growth has been strongly concentrated in a few areas, while labour productivity — the key driver of profits and wages — has not grown much at all. As one of the founders of growth theory, Robert Solow, put it: "You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics." Josefsson asks: shouldn’t at least investments in technologies or personnel in relevant sectors be increasing? Digging into the Conference Board’s Total Economy Database and the EU’s KLEMS database, he ...
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