*The Economist* on the speed of AI take-off

A booming but workerless economy may be humanity’s ultimate destination. But, argues Tyler Cowen of George Mason University, an economist who is largely bullish about AI, change will be slower than the underlying technology permits. “There’s a lot of factors of production…the stronger the AI is, the more the weaknesses of the other factors bind you,” he says. “It could be energy; it could be human stupidity; it could be regulation; it could be data constraints; it could just be institutional sluggishness.” Another possibility is that even a superintelligence would run out of ideas. “ AI may resolve a problem with the fishermen, but it wouldn’t change what is in the pond,” wrote Philippe Aghion of LSE and others in a working paper in 2017.

Here is the full piece, of interest throughout.