Artificial intelligence (AI) has been hyped to the skies as the “fourth industrial revolution” and the thing that will wipe out 50% of white-collar workers’ jobs. There’s just one problem with that, according to Goldman Sachs: It doesn’t exactly show up in the economic data.
Elsie Peng, Joseph Briggs, and Sarah Dong, from the team of chief economist Jan Hatzius, explain in a Sept. 13 research note the “measured impact” on GDP from AI is an “intermediate impact” from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), so it only counts toward final demand when a final product is sold. For example, a semiconductor only shows up in GDP when, say, a laptop is purchased. This means billions of dollars in AI-enabled economic activity isn’t being measured, Peng, Briggs, and Dong argue.
