AI is an unfamiliar phase of capital and labour saving technological development.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the trailblazer of the fourth industrial revolution, rolling-out integrated networks and automating all kinds of activities through super-smart softwares which are auto-didactic and capable to instruct most types of machines to perform all kind of task.  In the OECD countries, the advent of AI is widely perceived as implying replacement of labour and there is wide-spread concern about impending job losses. Here I will focus on AI in the context of developing countries, in particular Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, with an abundance of people and hence radically different relative price ratios between capital and labour.

My blog will address the following questions:

– Which types of AI are we really talking about?

– How fast is the diffusion of AI in low and middle income countries?

– What will be the economic and social impact of AI in developing countries?

Cornell’s Ravi Kanbur has emphasized that the future is in our hands. In his view, we should not take as given that technology will displace labour. Instead, by enhancing public and private  sector collaboration, it would be possible to work out how new tech can harness rather than replace labour.