While AI will have welcome economic benefits, aggressive public policy is needed to make sure everyone benefits, says a new White House reporton AI and the economy.

Although it is difficult to predict these economic effects precisely, the report suggests that policymakers should prepare for five primary economic effects:

  • Positive contributions to aggregate productivity growth;
  • Changes in the skills demanded by the job market, including greater demand for higher-level technical skills;
  • Uneven distribution of impact, across sectors, wage levels, education levels, job types, and locations;
  • Churning of the job market as some jobs disappear while others are created; and
  • The loss of jobs for some workers in the short-run, and possibly longer depending on policy responses.

There is substantial uncertainty about how strongly these effects will be felt and how rapidly they will arrive, the report notes.

Because the effects of AI-driven automation will be felt across the whole economy, and the areas of greatest impact may be difficult to predict, policy responses must be targeted to the whole economy, it adds.

The report suggests three broad strategies for addressing the impacts of AI-driven automation across the whole U.S. economy:

  1. Invest in and develop AI for its many benefits;
  2. Educate and train Americans for jobs of the future; and
  3. Aid workers in the transition and empower workers to ensure broadly shared growth.

Continued engagement between government, industry, technical and policy experts, and the public should play an important role in moving the Nation toward policies that create broadly shared prosperity, unlock the creative potential of American companies and workers, advance diversity and inclusion of the technical community in AI, and ensure the Nation’s continued leadership in the creation and use of AI, it concludes.