AI IS ONLY HALF THE SOLUTION TO ECONOMIC GROWTH, THE OTHER HALF DEPENDS ON HOW GOVERNMENTS SUPPORT SCIENCE
- Artificial intelligence (AI) can generate ideas faster, but it can’t overcome a system that prevents ideas from being shared, tested and built upon.
- Governments and companies currently risk underinvesting in this knowledge ecosystem, which AI needs to deliver economic growth.
- If governments want economic growth and sovereignty as a return on their AI investments, they must also help to facilitate the flow of data and ideas.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is often sold on the basis that it will lead to more breakthroughs. Dario Amodei, Anthropic’s CEO, believes the rate of discovery in biology could rise “by 10x or more if there were a lot more talented, creative researchers,” which, he implies, AI agents would supply.
The presumption is that the fundamental limit on knowledge creation is intelligence. If only this were so. Governments and businesses are investing billions in AI on the promise that it will dramatically accelerate innovation and economic growth. But what if the biggest constraint on AI-driven discovery isn’t intelligence, but the way we organize and share knowledge?
Researchers have already harvested science’s low-hanging fruit, making each successive insight harder, more expive and slower to find.
OCTOBER 05, 2026 – WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM
It’s estimated that it now takes 41 times as many researchers to sustain the growth the US achieved in the 1930s. Automating the production of ideas through AI is posited as a way to offset this loss. Stanford academic Charles Jones summarized this as a world in which “machines invent all possible ideas, leading to a maximum productivity”.
But while AI can generate ideas faster, it can’t overcome a system that prevents ideas from being shared, tested and built upon. That’s why governments seeking economic growth and technological sovereignty from their AI investments should treat open knowledge as critical infrastructure.
If not, they risk investing billions to make AI smarter while underinvesting in the knowledge ecosystem the technology needs to actually deliver economic growth.
