2023

There are many concerns about how artificial intelligence (AI) might impact communication and democratic processes adversely, as opportunities to the production of fake news are becoming more and more sophisticated. Yet AI also offers new ways to organise democracy. It could even enable direct democracy to be reinvented. Hans Gersbach (KOF) and César Martinelli (George Mason University) have been exploring these possibilities and they present one of its core ideas in this article.

Johannes Dahlke, Assistant Professor of Digital Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Twente, KOF Research Fellow and former member of the Innovation Economics Section, talks in this interview about the potential of artificial intelligence and explains how technological change will affect the labour market and individual professions.

The KOF Business Situation Indicator for the Swiss private sector continued to deteriorate in November (see graphic G 3). This was the third monthly decline in a row. The business outlook for the next six months remains virtually unchanged at a subdued level. Economic activity in Switzerland remains sluggish.

The development of new digital technologies is increasingly dependent on international knowledge. In the recent past this trend has led to political concerns about dependence on foreign knowledge suppliers. A study by KOF, which uses a global patent dataset from 1980 to 2015, emphasises the importance of international knowledge networks for technological progress.

The KOF Business Situation Indicator for the Swiss private sector, which is calculated from KOF’s Business Tendency Surveys, fell in October for the second month in a row (see chart G5). Following a modest decline in the previous month, business activity cooled significantly in October. By contrast, companies’ business expectations for the coming six months are almost unchanged and more or less average on a medium-term comparison.  

Switzerland’s population is ageing. This article attempts to qualitatively assess the impact that this trend has on inflation. Its immediate effects are likely to be moderate. At the same time, there are risks: inflation could turn out to be higher but, surprisingly, it could also be lower.