The White House research paper “Artificial Intelligence and the Great Divergence” opens by recalling that for centuries most of the world’s economies grew at a similarly slow rate, until the Industrial Revolution triggered a “Great Divergence” in which industrializing nations sharply accelerated their growth relative to the rest of the world. The report notes that artificial intelligence is a potentially transformative technology that is often compared to the Industrial Revolution, and it raises the question of whether an artificial intelligence revolution could similarly lead to a second great divergence among countries.
The paper observes that clear national leaders are already emerging in artificial intelligence investment, performance, and adoption metrics, rather than a uniform global advance. It states that the Trump administration is laying the groundwork for American artificial intelligence dominance by accelerating innovation, boosting infrastructure development, and pursuing deregulation, while also seeking to establish global influence through technology exports. At the same time, the report emphasizes that the future impact of artificial intelligence is uncertain, so its analysis focuses on empirical data that can be seen and measured today rather than speculative long term forecasts.
The authors outline a structured approach to assessing artificial intelligence’s economic implications. They begin by reviewing analyses of the potential for artificial intelligence led economic growth and then discuss estimates of the technology’s impact on both gross domestic product and the labor force. Recognizing these impacts are uncertain and require ongoing scrutiny, the paper next highlights metrics for tracking the rapid pace of artificial intelligence investment, performance, and adoption, noting that many of these metrics are doubling every few months and increasing manyfold each year. The report then compares how different countries are performing on these measures, and it concludes by detailing actions President Trump is taking to ensure the United States continues to lead on artificial intelligence, citing his declaration that “America is the country that started the AI race” and that “America is going to win it.”
