
Show Notes
Generative AI has moved from curiosity to everyday tool with remarkable speed. But the big productivity question is not simply whether people are using it; it is whether firms, sectors and economies can turn that use into lasting productivity gains.
This episode of Productivity Puzzles explores the challenges and opportunities that Generative AI presents, centring on a new article just published in the International Productivity Monitor, the joint journal of the Centre for the Study of Living Standards and The Productivity Institute.
Host Professor Bart van Ark is joined by:
Martin Baily, Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Brookings Institution Diane Coyle, Bennett Professor of Public Policy and Research Director, Bennett School of Public Policy, University of Cambridge
For more information on the topic:
Martin Neil Baily, David M. Byrne, Aidan T. Kane and Paul E. Soto, The Potential for Sustained Productivity Impetus from GenAI, International Productivity Monitor, Issue 50, pp 5-26. Martin Neil Baily, 2023. "Lessons from a Career in Productivity Research: Some Answers, A Glimpse of the Future, and Much Left to Learn," International Productivity Monitor, Issue 44, pages 120-149, Fall. Productivity Puzzles Podcast: Ask the expert on… what is productivity? Tera Allas, AI and productivity: the ladder of leakage, Substack. Carol Corrado, Jonathan Haskel, Cecilia Jona-Lasinio, Artificial intelligence and productivity: an intangible assets approach, Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Volume 37, Issue 3, Autumn 2021, Pages 435–458 Zvi Griliches, Hybrid Corn: An Exploration in the Economics of Technological Change. Econometrica, October 1957, 25(4), pp. 501-22.
About Productivity Puzzles:
Productivity Puzzles is brought to you by The Productivity Institute, a research body involving nine academic institutions across the UK, nine Productivity Forums throughout the nation, and a national independent Productivity Commission to advise policy makers at all levels of government. It is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.
More from Productivity Puzzles
Is the UK’s recent productivity recovery a sign of lasting improvement? How could AI, technology adoption and shifting global economic conditions shape the country’s future productivity?
Why do firms invest when they do and not necessarily when they should? Are firms too cautious to invest? Or just realistic about uncertainty? Is the real investment gap about money or about mindset?
If one in five working‑age people are inactive, what does that say about the UK’s productivity problem? Why does ill health push so many people out of work in the UK, but not in peer countries?
If universities are engines of growth, why isn’t productivity accelerating? What’s the point of educating graduates if regions can’t keep or use them?
Do we need to rethink how we measure productivity in the age of digital technologies and AI?