These are heady days on the artificial intelligence (AI) frontier, when each day brings forth fresh headlines regarding better ChatGPTs, or massive buildouts of data centers to enable the instant crunching of galactic volumes of digitized data.

Anyone interacting with even a free online large language model (LLM), such as Perplexity, can be astonished at the model’s ability to understand questions and smoothly provide answers or summaries.

The rapidly ascending abilities and adoption of AI is prompting macroeconomists and others to ask the $64,000 question: Will AI boost worker productivity and thus real income and wealth?

At the heart of real incomes, living standards and wealth is worker output. A nation’s workforce, enabled by AI to manufacture more goods, farm more efficiently, drive more transport vehicles, or deliver more services is obviously richer.

The good news is that serious AI scholars anticipate leapfrogging output in key sectors of the