Source: Fortune
Summary
A new policy brief from the Peterson Institute for International Economics argues that AI is growing rapidly, but official statistics are not equipped to track it. The brief estimates that AI generated $250 billion in economic activity in 2025 and that its output is growing at 2,600% a year. However, not everyone agrees with the scale of the impact, and some argue that AI is mostly used to help create other products and services rather than being a product in its own right.
Our Reading
The numbers tell one story.
The AI economy has a measurement gap, and the numbers are not adding up. Big Tech firms claim AI is transforming everything, but official statistics don’t show it. The Peterson Institute for International Economics proposes a dedicated statistical track for AI to aggregate activity across industries and adjust for its rapid improvement.
But not everyone is convinced. Diane Coyle, Bennett Professor of Public Policy at the University of Cambridge, disputes the scale of the impact, arguing that AI is mostly an intermediate input and that its economic impact only matters if it makes the end product better.
The strategy enters a familiar phase: a debate about how to measure the impact of a transformative technology.
Author: Evan Null
