Artificial intelligence (AI) is advancing rapidly at a moment when the global economy badly needs a new source of growth. The stakes are especially high in emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs), where growth has slowed to a two-decade low just as about 1.2 billion young people are set to reach working age between 2025 and 2035, likely their largest youth cohort ever. These economies need faster growth and more productive jobs. With the right complementary policies and investments, AI could help EMDEs achieve both, extending its benefits beyond the advanced economies already best equipped to use it.
A protracted growth slowdown
Global potential growth—the pace an economy can sustain without generating inflationary pressures—has fallen from 3.6 percent a year in the 2000s to 2.8 percent in the 2010s. It is projected to average about 2.2 percent in the 2020s. The decline has been steeper in EMDEs, where potential growth is projected to fall from 5.9 percent in the 2000s to 4.1 percent this decade (Figure 1). Weaker investment, slower labor force growth, and declining productivity growth have all contributed to this broad-based slowdown around the world.
read more: https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/developmenttalk/the-global-growth-slowdown–ai-to-the-rescue-
