Report by Mark Muro and Sifan Liu: “Much of the U.S. artificial intelligence (AI) discussion revolves around futuristic dreams of both utopia and dystopia. From extreme to extreme, the promises range from solutions to global climate change to a “robot apocalypse.”
However, it bears remembering that AI is also becoming a real-world economic fact with major implications for national and regional economic development as the U.S. crawls out of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Based on advanced uses of statistics, algorithms, and fast computer processing, AI has become a focal point of U.S. innovation debates. Even more, AI is increasingly viewed as the next great “general purpose technology”—one that has the power to boost the productivity of sector after sector of the economy.
All of which is why state and city leaders are increasingly assessing AI for its potential to spur economic growth. Such leaders are analyzing where their regions stand and what they need to do to ensure their locations are not left behind.
In response to such questions, this analysis examines the extent, location, and concentration of AI technology creation and business activity in U.S. metropolitan areas.
Employing seven basic measures of AI capacity, the report benchmarks regions on the basis of their core AI assets and capabilities as they relate to two basic dimensions: AI research and AI commercialization. In doing so, the assessment categorizes metro areas into five tiers of regional AI involvement and extracts four main findings reflecting that involvement…(More)”.