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U‑M economist: AI could raise productivity but who owns the gains will shape outcomes
Summary
Dr. Justin Wolfers told Michigan revenue officials that AI can meaningfully boost productivity and growth but warned distribution depends on ownership and market structure; he urged policymakers to preserve competition and prepare for uneven labor effects.
Dr. Justin Wolfers, a professor of public policy and economics at the University of Michigan, told the Consensus Revenue Estimating Conference that artificial intelligence can yield large productivity gains in individual tasks and modest but meaningful increases in long‑run GDP, while raising important distributional and policy questions.
Wolfers summarized randomized and field studies showing sharp productivity improvements in narrow tasks: he cited experiments where access to GitHub Copilot reduced coding task time from 161 minutes to 71 minutes (a 56% improvement) and where an office‑type task fell from 27 to 16 minutes (about a 40% gain) when workers used large…
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