Frontier Dialogue

Frontier Dialogue #16

November 5, 2025

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A partial list of (registered) participants

Artificial intelligence is poised to transform the economy, and one area that particularly deserves frontier understanding is its relationship with economic growth. The famous Solow Paradox can also be said today: you can see the AI rage everywhere but in the productivity statistics.

Currently, prevailing views of the macro impact of AI on the economy range from being trivial to being paradigm-shifting. But it is not just about academic understanding. Governments, companies, and investors are pouring unprecedented amounts of capital into AI development, all happening without a proper understanding of how it will impact economic growth (employment as part of it), income distribution, and welfare.

To sharpen our understanding, this Dialogue will explore three interrelated questions:

1. What historical lessons have we learned from the impact of technology on the economy?

2. What is special about AI as a general-purpose technology this time? What is our assessment on its impact on the economy?

3. How do we define macro-level AI strategical goals and measure success?

To track and deeply assess these related issues, we have gathered a distinguished panel of thought leaders in this field. Through an engaging and insightful dialogue, our aim is to generate fresh insights into these important questions that still lack clear answers.

Panel I keynote Presentations

Solow Paradox Revisited: Historical Lessons and Current Assessment in the AI Era

Speaker: Harry X. Wu (PKU)

Harry X. Wu is Professor of Economics, emeritus, and Director of Growth Lab at the National School of Development, Peking University. He previously held a tenured professorship at Hitotsubashi University and served as the fifth President of the Asia KLEMS consortium. He is a renowned growth economist who has contributed extensively to measuring China’s real growth and productivity performance in the long run. He worked closely with the late Professor Angus Maddison on China’s historical data and is a member of the Maddison Project. He will revisit the Solow Paradox and discuss the extent to which it has been addressed in the past, and what might be different this time with AI.

Lessons from History: Measuring the Impact of Technology on Economic Growth

Speaker: Diego Comin (Dartmouth)

Diego Comin is Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College, Research Fellow at CEPR, and Faculty Research Fellow at the NBER’s Economic Fluctuations and Growth Program. His research focuses on business cycles, technology diffusion, and economic growth, with numerous publications in top economic journals. He co-leads the Firms and Technology program at the World Bank and has advised the European Commission, IMF, and the Prime Minister of Malaysia. The relevance of his research extends beyond academia and policy circles. For instance, Microsoft has applied technology diffusion models co-developed by him to forecast the adoption of its cloud services. He will share the historical lessons from past technological revolutions, focusing on how their impacts on GDP were measured and what these lessons suggest for understanding AI’s potential effects.

Beyond GDP: Productivity, Growth, and Assessing Progress in the Age of AI

Speaker: Erik Brynjolfsson (Stanford)

Erik Brynjolfsson is one of the world’s most-cited and leading scholars on the economics of information and artificial intelligence. He was among the first to measure the productivity contributions of IT and AI, and to highlight the complementary role of organizational capital and other intangibles. He is currently the Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki Professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business and Director of the Stanford Digital Economy Lab at the Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. He is the author of nine books and over 100 academic articles. He will assess AI’s potential impact on productivity and growth, questioning the limits of GDP as a measure and exploring alternative ways to capture AI’s true value.

Measuring Productivity Growth in the Era of AI and its Policy Implications

Speaker: Carol Corrado (Georgetown)

Carol Corrado is a prominent economist and thought leader on the knowledge economy, productivity, and economic measurement. She is currently Senior Policy Scholar at Georgetown University. She researches intangible capital and digital innovation, including AI, and their impact on economic growth. Previously, she served as Chief of industrial output at the Federal Reserve Board in Washington DC and most recently as Distinguished Principal Research Fellow in Economics at The Conference Board. With her deep understanding of measuring economy and policy experience, she will compare how economists diverge sharply in their estimates of AI’s potential impact on productivity, from Acemoglu’s relatively cautious outlook to more optimistic assessments, highlight the underlying macroeconomic logic for understanding AI’s contribution to productivity, and discuss relevant macro measures for policy implications.

Concluding Remarks: Recalibrating Growth and Progress in the Age of AI

Speaker: Michael Spence (Stanford)

Professor Michael Spence, the 2001 Nobel laureate in Economic Sciences, is currently a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and Philip H. Knight Professor and Dean, emeritus, at Stanford Graduate School of Business. He is a world authority on economic growth, especially on the convergence between advanced and developing economies. He has served as the Chairman of the Independent Commission on Growth and Development created by the World Bank in 2006. He will offer a concluding perspective on AI's profound implications for the future of growth and development, with an eye to defining macro-level AI strategies and measuring success.

Panel II Panel Discussion and Q&A

Speaker: All participants

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