Markets love drama. Few tropes have spread faster this year than the claim that artificial intelligence is an asset bubble in search of a pin. Coverage that explicitly mentions an “AI bubble” has proliferated. The narrative we hear is that trillions are being committed to AI investment, but little is showing up in revenues or productivity gains. It’s a neat narrative but it’s also increasingly wrong. A recently published academic study offers unusually clean evidence that generative AI can drive increased revenue, and thus improve productivity, inside a large retail operation. This is important as it shows that AI implementation can help to increase revenue in the real economy. In other words, it’s not just companies selling AI that can benefit from the AI theme. The headline result of the study from researchers at Zhejiang and Columbia universities — Generative AI and Firm Productivity: Field Experiments in Online Retail — was simple.

Full opinion : Research shows that the implementation and adoption of artificial intelligence can help to increase revenue in the real economy.