Canaries in the Gold Mine: Early Productivity Gains from Artificial Intelligence Creating Organization Capital / Tania Babina, Alex X. He, Renhao Jiang.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Babina, Tania.

Contributor:

He, Alex X.

Jiang, Renhao.

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w35684.

NBER working paper series no. w35684

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2026.

Summary:

Using a new firm-level measure of AI investment based on AI-skilled employment--spanning machine learning through generative and agentic AI--we show that AI investments are associated with productivity growth in recent years, but not over the previous decade. We trace the productivity gains to the accumulation of organization capital that AI helps create: durable firm-specific knowledge acquired through learning-by-doing that enables more efficient production. We build a novel measure of organization capital based on workers' job descriptions and document that productivity gains are driven by AI-skilled jobs that build organization capital. Overall, our findings suggest that AI investment generates productivity growth by creating organization capital.

Notes:

August 2026.

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