新冠疫情与人工智能的“经济奇点”--基于消费者行为大数据的证据

A Novel Coronavirus Outbreak and Artificial Intelligence Singularity:Evidence from Domestic Service Robots Big Data in China

人工智能作为一项新技术,已经逐渐深入到人们的社会生活之中。而关于人工智能是否能带来经济增长以及人工智能能否会带来经济奇点在理论界依然存在争议。导致这些争议可能是因为这些研究都是基于工业机器人。那么,服务机器人,特别是家用服务机器人是否也存在以上问题?为了回答这个问题,本文采用新型冠状病毒肺炎疫情作为外生自然实验,以2019年农历同期为对照组,通过分析家用服务机器人用户行为的大数据,研究新型冠状病毒肺炎疫情对人工智能产品的有效需求的影响,研究发现,在新型冠状病毒肺炎疫情期间的除夕之后,消费者使用家用服务机器人的时间显著增加,也即:人工智能产品的有效需求更旺盛;进一步研究发现,在家用服务机器人App更易搜索、使用频次更高、使用时间更长以及活跃用户规模较大的情景之下,家用服务机器人的有效需求更多。本文的研究表明,突发的重大公共卫生事件导致了消费者心理不适,消费者通过使用人工智能产品低成本地实现了安保、清洁和娱乐功能,安全舒适的家庭环境和精神愉悦都能缓解消费者的心理负担,进而提升了人工智能产品的有效需求。进而促进了人工智能相关产业的发展,人工智能的“经济奇点”出现的概率也陡增。此外,本文的研究为人工智能是否存在“索洛悖论”提供了一个大数据的实证证据,同时,也为有效推进我国“智能+”产业政策提供了一个观察视角。

In December, 2019, Wuhan, Hubei province, became the centre of an outbreak of pneumonia of unknown cause, which raised intense attention not only in China but also internationally. There is an argument on whether artificial intelligence is able to result in economic growth or singularity. The arguments were maybe from the evidence from the industrial robots. Are there the above problems for the domestic service robots industry? So we make use of the unique domestic service robots App database. Based on this natural experiment and 2019 as the control group, this paper investigates how the novel coronavirus outbreak has a marked impact on the demand for the domestic service robots. We find that the effective demand significantly increases after Chinese New Year’s Eve during the novel coronavirus. Furthermore, we find this phenomenon is more significant for Apps with easier daily search for, higher daily used frequencies, the longer daily used and the more daily active users. These results show that the 2019 novel coronavirus(2019-n Co V) is for people a barometer to our psychological well-being, and the domestic service robots enable consumers more mental health. This paper provides evidence on the forthcoming of artificial intelligence singularity on emerging market.