IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/amz/wpaper/2023-09.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

AI Technological Trajectories in Patent Data: General Purpose Technology and Concentration of Actors

Author

Listed:
  • Hötte, Kerstin
  • Tarannum, Taheya
  • Verendel, Vilhelm
  • Bennett, Lauren

Abstract

It is often claimed that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the next general purpose technology (GPT) with profound economic and societal impacts. However, without a consensus definition of AI and its empirical measurement, there are wide discrepancies in beliefs about its trajectory, diffusion, and ownership. In this study, we compare four AI patent classification approaches reflecting different technological trajectories, namely (1) short-range, (2) academic, (3) technical, and (4) broad interpretations of AI. We use US patents granted between 1990-2019 to assess the extent to which each approach qualifies AI as a GPT, and study patterns of its concentration and agency. Strikingly, the four trajectories overlap on only 1.36% of patents and vary in scale, accounting for shares of 3-17% of all US patents. Despite capturing the smallest set of AI patents, the short-range trajectory identified by the latest AI keywords demonstrates the strongest GPT characteristics of high intrinsic growth and generality. All trajectories agree, however, that AI inventions are highly concentrated within a few firms and this has consequences for competition policy and market regulation. Our study highlights how various methods of defining AI can lead to contrasting as well as similar conclusions about its impact.

Suggested Citation

  • Hötte, Kerstin & Tarannum, Taheya & Verendel, Vilhelm & Bennett, Lauren, 2023. "AI Technological Trajectories in Patent Data: General Purpose Technology and Concentration of Actors," INET Oxford Working Papers 2023-09, Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford.
    • Handle: RePEc:amz:wpaper:2023-09
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://oms-inet.files.svdcdn.com/production/files/AI_Technological_Trajectories_in_Patent_Data.pdf?dm=1685523590
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Patent; Artificial Intelligence; AI; Classification; General Purpose Technology; Concentration; Inventions; Innovation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O31 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes
    • O34 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Intellectual Property and Intellectual Capital

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:amz:wpaper:2023-09. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: INET Oxford admin team (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inoxfuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.