Business

Can AI Cause a Recession? What the Evidence Shows

Whether AI causes a recession is not something economists can answer with certainty. AI is a general-purpose technology that raises productivity in some tasks…

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INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

The Industrial Revolution Begins

Mechanised manufacturing and steam power began replacing hand-based artisanal work in Britain, starting the first sustained wave of productivity-driven economic growth.

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MASS PRODUCTION

The Moving Assembly Line

Henry Ford's moving assembly line cut Model T production time from 12 hours to 90 minutes, standardising mass production across manufacturing.

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PRODUCTIVITY PARADOX

Solow's Productivity Paradox

Economist Robert Solow observed that computers were visible everywhere except in the productivity statistics, despite widespread 1980s office computerisation.

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FINANCIAL CRISIS

The Global Financial Crisis

A crisis in mortgage-backed securities and financial-sector leverage triggered the deepest global recession since the Great Depression.

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TRANSFORMER AI

The Transformer Architecture

Google researchers published the transformer neural-network architecture, the technical foundation nearly all major generative AI models are built on today.

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GENERATIVE AI

Generative AI Reaches Mass Adoption

OpenAI's public release of ChatGPT reportedly reached 100 million users within two months, one of the fastest consumer-technology adoption curves on record.

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ENTERPRISE ADOPTION

Enterprise AI Adoption and Policy Expand

Enterprises moved from experimenting with generative AI to production deployment, while governments including the EU, US and India advanced national AI strategies.

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CURRENT EVIDENCE

Where the Evidence Stands Today

No major central bank, the IMF or the World Bank has attributed an actual recession to AI adoption as of this writing; research treats AI's macroeconomic effect as an op…

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