explosive growth
In plain wordsA hypothetical jump in the world economy's growth rate to 30% a year or more, about ten times today's pace, which some economists think AI that replaces human workers could cause.
A sustained acceleration of gross world product growth far above the modern norm of about 3% a year, conventionally to more than 30% a year, so that the world economy would double every two to three years or faster. The case that AI could cause it comes from growth theory: if AI can substitute for human labor in most tasks, including research, output can be reinvested in more AI and robots without the bottleneck of population growth, recreating the feedback loop that, on some readings of economic history, produced accelerating growth before the demographic transition. Skeptics point to tasks that resist automation and come to dominate costs (Baumol effects), limits from physical capital and energy, regulation, and slow diffusion of technology, and note that measured productivity gains from AI so far are modest. The concept serves as an operational definition of transformative AItransformative AI, n.: AI that changes the world as deeply as farming or the Industrial Revolution did. It is defined by its effects on society and the economy, not by how humanlike or clever it is. and as a marker in debates about slow takeoffslow takeoff, n.: A scenario in which AI becomes superhuman step by step, over years or decades, as it spreads through the economy, giving society time to spot problems and respond..
A 30% growth rate sounds absurd until you remember that 3% would have sounded absurd in 1700.
Origin
Analyzed in Tom Davidson's 2021 Open Philanthropy report 'Could Advanced AI Drive Explosive Economic Growth?', which used the 30% threshold and built on David Roodman's 2020 model of long-run hyperbolic growth; developed further by economists including Philip Trammell and Anton Korinek, and by Ege Erdil and Tamay Besiroglu of Epoch AI (2023).
Related
- transformative AItransformative AI, n.: AI that changes the world as deeply as farming or the Industrial Revolution did. It is defined by its effects on society and the economy, not by how humanlike or clever it is.
- slow takeoffslow takeoff, n.: A scenario in which AI becomes superhuman step by step, over years or decades, as it spreads through the economy, giving society time to spot problems and respond.
- automated AI researchautomated AI research, n.: Using AI systems to do the work of AI researchers, such as running experiments and writing code for new models, so that AI helps build its own successors.
- technological unemploymenttechnological unemployment, n.: Joblessness caused by machines or software taking over work that people used to be paid for, faster than new kinds of work appear for them.
- intelligence explosionintelligence explosion, n.: The idea that once AI gets good enough at improving AI, each smarter version could build a smarter one faster still, so abilities would snowball far beyond human level in a short time.
- Epoch AIEpoch AI, prop. n.: A research nonprofit that gathers data on how fast AI is advancing — the computing power, data and money behind it — and publishes forecasts and difficult tests for AI.
Sources
- Davidson, T. (2021). Could Advanced AI Drive Explosive Economic Growth? Open Philanthropy.
- Erdil, E. & Besiroglu, T. (2023). Explosive growth from AI automation: A review of the arguments. arXiv:2309.11690. arxiv.org/abs/2309.11690
Mentioned in
country of geniuses in a datacentercountry of geniuses in a datacenter, phr.: A phrase for future AI so capable that one data center could hold the equivalent of millions of Nobel-level experts, working faster than people on any problem., general-purpose technologygeneral-purpose technology, n.: A technology, like electricity or the computer, that spreads through the whole economy, keeps improving and sparks many other inventions. Many economists think AI is one., slow takeoffslow takeoff, n.: A scenario in which AI becomes superhuman step by step, over years or decades, as it spreads through the economy, giving society time to spot problems and respond., transformative AItransformative AI, n.: AI that changes the world as deeply as farming or the Industrial Revolution did. It is defined by its effects on society and the economy, not by how humanlike or clever it is., universal basic incomeuniversal basic income, n.: A regular cash payment from the government to every adult, with no conditions attached, sometimes proposed as a way to share wealth if AI takes over much paid work., intelligence curseintelligence curse, n.: The worry that once AI can do most jobs, governments and companies will no longer need ordinary people and so will stop looking after them, like oil-rich states that neglect their citizens., Machines of Loving GraceMachines of Loving Grace, prop. n.: A 2024 essay by Dario Amodei, head of the AI company Anthropic, imagining how very capable AI could pack decades of progress against disease, poverty and bad government into a few years — if its risks are managed., Open PhilanthropyOpen Philanthropy, prop. n.: A large American charitable foundation, renamed Coefficient Giving in 2025, that has been the biggest private funder of research on the risks of advanced AI., Robin HansonRobin Hanson, prop. n.: An American economist who debated Eliezer Yudkowsky about whether AI would take off suddenly or gradually, and who imagined an economy run by digital copies of human minds.