Does Artificial Intelligence benefit UK businesses? An empirical study of the impact of AI on productivity

TL;DR

This study investigates whether AI adoption enhances UK business productivity, analyzing data from 2015-2019 and finding no statistically significant productivity gains associated with AI use.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence on the impact of AI adoption on productivity using UK microdata, addressing a gap in current understanding.

Findings

No significant productivity increase from AI adoption

Empirical analysis using UK microdata from 2015-2019

Highlights need for further research on AI's economic impact

Abstract

Media hype and technological breakthroughs are fuelling the race to adopt Artificial Intelligence amongst the business community, but is there evidence to suggest this will increase productivity? This paper uses 2015-2019 microdata from the UK Office for National Statistics to identify if the adoption of Artificial Intelligence techniques increases labour productivity in UK businesses. Using fixed effects estimation (Within Group) with a log-linear regression specification the paper concludes that there is no statistically significant impact of AI adoption on labour productivity.