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AI as a new emerging technological paradigm: evidence from global patenting

Author

Listed:
  • Giacomo Damioli

    (BETA, Université de Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France)

  • Vincent Van Roy

    (Faculty of Business and Economics, KU Leuven, Belgium - Idea Consult, Belgium)

  • Daniel Vertesy

    (International Telecommunication Union, Geneva, Switzerland – UNU-MERIT, Maastricht, The Netherlands)

  • Marco Vivarelli

    (Dipartimento di Politica Economica, DISCE, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano, Italy – UNU-MERIT, Maastricht, The Netherlands – IZA, Bonn, Germany)

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) is emerging as a transformative innovation with the potential to drive significant economic growth and productivity gains. This study examines whether AI is initiating a technological revolution, signifying a new technological paradigm, using the perspective of evolutionary neo-Schumpeterian economics. Using a global dataset combining information on AI patenting activities and their applicants between 2000 and 2016, our analysis reveals that AI patenting has accelerated and substantially evolved in terms of its pervasiveness, with AI innovators shifting from the ICT core industries to non-ICT service industries over the investigated period. Moreover, there has been a decrease in concentration of innovation activities and a reshuffling in the innovative hierarchies, with innovative entries and young and smaller applicants driving this change. Finally, we find that AI technologies play a role in generating and accelerating further innovations (so revealing to be “enabling technologies”, a distinctive feature of GPTs). All these features have characterised the emergence of major technological paradigms in the past and suggest that AI technologies may indeed generate a paradigmatic shift.

Suggested Citation

  • Giacomo Damioli & Vincent Van Roy & Daniel Vertesy & Marco Vivarelli, 2024. "AI as a new emerging technological paradigm: evidence from global patenting," DISCE - Quaderni del Dipartimento di Politica Economica dipe0038, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Dipartimenti e Istituti di Scienze Economiche (DISCE).
    • Handle: RePEc:ctc:serie5:dipe0038
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Artificial Intelligence; Technological Paradigm; Structural Change; Patents;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O31 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes

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