Artificial Intelligence, Innovation, and Growth

Undergraduate / Graduate

Social and cultural innovation, alongside economic growth, are among the most compelling, critical and challenging phenomena in modern social science. Innovation has always been associated with unleashing transformative growth in art, science, and the economy, and in this class we explore these issues in the context of the contemporary emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI represents a novel source of innovation in economy and society, but also a powerful tool for understanding, modeling, and steering innovation in new ways. The primary purpose of this course is to enable students to understand innovation and growth in the age of AI, and with tools from AI alongside theoretical frameworks and methods from economics, sociology, evolution, and complex systems necessary for study them. The course strives to provide students with a background in dynamic analysis, data analysis, and modern AI requisite for studying innovation in the modern age. We will also consider a number of compelling theoretical and empirical challenges, ranging from the paradox of institutionalizing innovation to inequalities that emerging AI capacities could create or remove to advances it could unleash in science and technology to the spread of misinformation to consequences of AI tools and "agents" in all domains of modern life to existential risks associated with AI. We will cover theories and models at an abstract and advanced level.