Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to boost productivity and economic growth, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director, Kristalina Georgieva has said.
Georgieva, stated this in her remarks at the closing of the G20 Leaders’ Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa.
She noted that slow productivity growth remained the main reason for slow global economic growth.
“AI can reverse this trend. In our assessment, AI can deliver almost one per cent additional economic growth. This is remarkable,” she said.
She said that AI was penetrating societies rapidly, with varying impacts on employment.
“In advanced economies, potentially 60 per cent of jobs may be affected, 40 per cent in emerging markets, and 26 per cent in low-income countries.
“ So AI is like a tsunami hitting the labour market,” she said.
Georgieva said to assess readiness for AI, the IMF had developed an index based on four dimensions which include digital infrastructure, skills and flexible labour markets, diffusion across the economy, and ethics and regulation.
She said the assessment revealed wide disparities with few countries performing well across all areas, many excelling in some, while several developing countries lag behind.
Georgieva called for urgent focus on domestic policies to enhance AI readiness, particularly in skills development, enabling infrastructure such as power, and innovation-friendly taxation.
She also stressed the need for a common platform on ethics and regulation, led by the United Nations, and support for developing countries to avoid falling behind in the AI revolution.
The IMF boss thanked President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa for his leadership and generous hospitality during the event.
“We want to recognise South Africa’s leadership of the G20, and in particular the important work that led to the October Declaration on Debt providing a clear road map for the future.
“We at the IMF recognise our own responsibility. We are providing a record high level of financing to our members, 50 programmes, of which 21 are in sub-Saharan Africa.
“We tailor our advice to the specific conditions of individual countries and support it with capacity development efforts,” she said.
The first Group of 20 summit to be held in Africa opened on Saturday with an ambitious agenda to make progress on solving some of the long-standing problems that have afflicted the world’s poorest nations.
Leaders and top government officials from the richest and leading emerging economies came together to try and find some consensus on the priorities set out by the host country.
The theme of this year’s conference was “Solidarity, Equality and Sustainability”.
