By Zhang Xin, Research Department of Innovative Development, DRC

Research Report, Special Issue, No.45, 2019 (Total 1673) 2019-7-19

Abstract: The essence of artificial intelligence (AI) is to equip robots with human intelligence. It is a common view held by academic, commercial and political circles from both home and abroad that AI will be a key driving force for improving future productivity and economic growth. They also believe that AI can replace human labor with faster speed and in wider areas and at higher levels than previous technologies. However, future development of AI will face some challenges. Viewing from the past development of AI, its journey ahead will not be plain sailing. Meanwhile, a widely recognized fact is that AI will only see a moderate growth for a long time and general application of the technology is still hard to be achieved in the foreseeable future. Therefore, new policies such as “national basic income” and “robot tax” are not yet appropriate for current AI development. This paper illustrates a calculable general equilibrium model of AI core manufacturing and service industry and reveals the initially simulated short-term impacts of AI on China’s economy. The research findings show that the development of AI will exert positive impacts prominently on China’s economy in the short term.

Key words: artificial intelligence, essential features, impact on economic performance, evaluation