World Development Report 2026: The Promise of AI – AI as a General-Purpose Technology
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In a time when development progress has dipped to its weakest pace in 75 years, artificial intelligence (AI) offers developing economies a rare path to greater prosperity. World Development Report 2026 provides the first comprehensive assessment of what AI means for these economies: how firms and governments are already using it, what is holding them back, where the largest gains may lie, and how the risks can be managed. AI is a general-purpose technology, or GPT. That puts it in rare company with steam power, electricity, computers, and the internet. Each transformed entire economies, and did so through incremental innovation over decades, where changes in one sector enabled and incentivized changes in other sectors. AI is following a similar pattern. In this session, Susan Athey, Co-Academic Lead for the World Development Report 2026 and The Economics of Technology Professor, Stanford Graduate School of Business, and Christopher Tonetti, Associate Professor, Stanford Graduate School of Business explore the implications of AI as a GPT, focusing on what determines the pace of change for different types of impacts and how country policy builds on an understanding of the drivers of timing and bottlenecks to change. This event is sponsored by the World Bank Group, Stanford Leadership Institute, Stanford Digital Economy Lab, and Stanford King Center on Global Development. The full program and additional links are available here: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/events/world-development-report-2026-promise-artificial-intelligence
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