Journal of the Knowledge Economy

https://doi.org/10.1007/s13132-023-01183-2

Artificial Intelligence and Economic

Development: An Evolutionary Investigation
and Systematic Review

Yong Qin1 · Zeshui Xu1 · Xinxin Wang1 · Marinko Skare2

Received: 24 June 2021 / Accepted: 21 February 2023

© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature
2023

Abstract
In today’s environment of the rapid rise of artificial intelligence (AI), debate con-
tinues about whether it has beneficial effects on economic development. However,
there is only a fragmented perception of what role and place AI technology actu-
ally plays in economic development (ED). In this paper, we pioneer the research by
focusing our detective work and discussion on the intersection of AI and economic
development. Specifically, we adopt a two-step methodology. At the first step, we
analyze 2211 documents in the AI&ED field using the bibliometric tool Bibliome-
trix, presenting the internal structure and external characteristics of the field through
different metrics and algorithms. In the second step, a qualitative content analysis of
clusters calculated from the bibliographic coupling algorithm is conducted, detailing
the content directions of recently distributed topics in the AI&ED field from differ-
ent perspectives. The results of the bibliometric analysis suggest that the number
of publications in the field has grown exponentially in recent years, and the most
relevant source is the “Sustainability” journal. In addition, deep learning and data
mining-related research are the key directions for the future. On the whole, scholars
dedicated to the field have developed close cooperation and communication across
the board. On the other hand, the content analysis demonstrates that most of the
research is centered on the five facets of intelligent decision-making, social govern-
ance, labor and capital, Industry 4.0, and innovation. The results provide a forward-
looking guide for scholars to grasp the current state and potential knowledge gaps in
the AI&ED field.

This article is part of the Topical Collection on AI in the Knowledge Economy and Society:
Implications for Theory, Policy and Practice

* Marinko Skare
mskare@unipu.hr
1
Business School, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China
2
Juraj Dobrila University of Pula, Pula, Croatia

13
Vol.:(0123456789)
 Journal of the Knowledge Economy

Keywords Artificial intelligence · Economic development · Bibliometrix · Content

analysis · Bibliographic coupling

Introduction

In recent years, the sound of artificial intelligence (AI) has always been in every-
one’s ears, and it seems to be telling us that the arrival of AI is the destiny of the age
(Makridakis, 2017). Indeed, AI technology is appearing in various forms at all lev-
els of our contact with society, from small daily chatting intelligent robots to large
industry and government-level assisted offices, and is quietly changing the way of
life around the world (Li et al., 2017). By convention, AI is described as a sub-disci-
pline of computer science dedicated to the development of data processing systems
and the execution of functions that match human intelligence, such as learning, rea-
soning, and self-improvement (Peres et al., 2020). According to Trifan and Buzatu
(2020), AI is machine learning, that is, a neural network trained on a data set. Drive
resources, data resources and computational theory are the three core elements that
influence the development of AI. In contrast to any of the technologies that have
emerged in the past, AI can get more brilliant at a particular practical task with the
accumulation of time owing to its unique learning ability. AI is designed to serve
humans in making the best decisions. To this end, AI has been incorporated into
operating systems in the hope of creating systems that can assist humans or even be
utterly AI-driven in their decision-making (Gomes et al., 2020). Progressively, AI
is becoming indispensable technological support for daily social life and economic
activities (Naimi-Sadigh et al., 2021). Its tremendous contribution to sustainable
economic development in all industries is rapidly becoming evident, leading it to
become an instant focus of attention at the industry, academic and even government
levels (Heylighen, 2017). Arguably, AI-related activities will be the driving force for
further economic development and result in fundamental shifts in the structure and
approach to production, and in the quantity and quality of consumption (Vyshnevs-
kyi et al., 2019).
However, while people are cheering this inspiring fact, some are expressing their
skepticism. Although the widespread application of AI will cause a short-lived
economic boost at this stage (Goertzel et al., 2017), in the long run, people’s over-
reliance on AI is likely to pose some potential threats (McClure, 2017). Such as
the unemployment fiasco, moral and ethical risks, and personal privacy concerns
that are often mentioned by scholars in the literature (Kak, 2018). What is more,
the technical bottlenecks in the development of AI technology itself also lead to a
large gap between the conception of theoretical research and the blueprint in actual
practice. In light of recent events between AI and economic development (AI&ED),
it is becoming extremely difficult to ignore the existence of the two colliding with
each other. Accordingly, a considerable amount of literature has been published on
AI&ED. These studies over the past two decades have provided important informa-
tion on discussions between AI and economic development. More importantly, the
evidence shows the increasing urgency and depth of the intersection between AI
and various sectors of economic activity. For instance, to allow the power sector

13
Journal of the Knowledge Economy

to provide good services at competitive prices, Hernández-Callejo et al. (2013)

designed an architecture model for power load forecasting based on artificial neural
networks that conduct short-term load forecasting.
The growing breadth and fragmentation of topics at the intersection of AI and
economic activity have made it increasingly difficult for scholars to attempt a com-
prehensive understanding of the field. To make matters worse, the complexity of
the topic has led to a diversity of insights, generating a wealth of ideas and investi-
gations on the link between AI and economic development. While there have been
some reviews of the literature on AI and economic development, the multifaceted
nature of the field suggests that this is still far from sufficient (Aghion et al., 2018).
On the one hand, short-term studies such as these do not necessarily show subtle
changes over time. On the other hand, the available reviews are selective in the
literature they employ and the range is usually limited to fit the volume and variety
of relevant literature. At the same time, it is not easy for scholars themselves to
objectively summarize and sort out the literature (Lee & Lim, 2021).
In moving forward to redress this challenge, this paper attempts, through a com-
bination manner of bibliometric analysis and literature review, to gain a one-stop
overview on the publications’ performance, collaboration patterns and intellectual
structure of the AI&ED domain. More pertinently, this study responds to this practi-
cal need by answering the following three broad research questions: (1) What is the
performance and current status of AI in economic activities and its related fields? (2)
Which research themes in the field of AI&ED have received sufficient attention and
exploration in recent years in the existing knowledge? (3) Which research agenda
should endeavor in this domain in the future? By doing so, we establish an overview
of the basic information in the field of AI&ED and its current status and trends, so
as to summarize possible knowledge gaps, provide new ideas for investigation and
locate areas of expected contribution for subsequent research (Donthu et al., 2021).
The contributions of this study are twofold. Firstly, we position the research per-
spective at the intersection of AI and economic development. Compared with other
investigations, the work in this paper is more contemporary and novel. It helps to
establish an understanding of the complexity and interdisciplinary nature of research
on the application of AI in economic development. Secondly, the two-phase meth-
odology, i.e., the two-pronged approach of bibliometric analysis and content sur-
vey, guarantees the comprehensiveness and reliability of the study (Qin et al., 2022).
Using advanced bibliometric techniques, the outline of the evolution and knowledge
structure of the AI&ED field is outlined. Also, the emerging research on AI applied
to economic activities is clearly perceived, which helps theory and practice to go
hand in hand. In particular, for the different knowledge streams, we deploy quali-
tative content analysis to discuss key publications to determine which topics and
issues are front and center in the context of AI and economic development, and how
the different topics are bundled in the knowledge streams.
In the remainder of this paper, we present how the two-step methodology works
in the “Research Design: A Two-Step Methodology” section. Based on bibliometric
techniques, the “Results of Bibliometric Analysis” section is developed from two
dimensions: performance analysis and science mapping. In the “AI and Economic
Development” section, we conduct a systematic literature review of the five themes

13
 Journal of the Knowledge Economy

identified. The “Discussions and Implications” section gives discussions and impli-
cations. Concluding remarks and limitations end the paper.

Research Design: A Two‑Step Methodology

We adopt a two-step methodology to achieve a deeper understanding of the intellec-

tual landscape of the AI&ED research field and the multi-level connections between
AI and economic development. The former employs bibliometric techniques to sci-
entifically conduct extensive quantitative analysis of relevant publications for pre-
liminary validation of research ideas. Based on the former, the latter uses a struc-
tured literature review approach to describe recent popular mainstream topics in
AI&ED to identify potential research gaps. The overall two-step research protocol is
depicted in Fig. 1.

Phase 1: Bibliometric Analysis

The implementation of a bibliometric analysis can empower us to identify the

dynamic nature of the AI&ED research field (Qin et al., 2021). We chose the most
popular and authoritative Web of Science (WoS) Core Collection database as the
starting point of the project. In line with the approach of most scholars at this phase,

Fig. 1  The two-step research protocol

13
Journal of the Knowledge Economy

we defined the field boundary using a set of keywords that are coherent with the
purpose of the study. To ensure that the final search results include as much of the
desired literature as possible, broader search strings were initially identified, i.e.,
TS = (“Artificial Intelligence” OR “Machine learning” OR “Deep learning” OR
“Intelligent agents” OR “Neural networks” OR “Data mining” OR “Natural lan-
guage processing” OR “Pattern recognition”) AND TS = (“Economic development”
OR “GDP” OR “Economy”). In parallel, to ensure state-of-the-art of records, purely
peer-reviewed academic journal articles were considered for this study. Only the
publications with language in English were taken into consideration. Besides, to
guarantee the annual property of the data, we limited the search span during the
period from 1900 to 2021. The search was carried out in March 2022, and a total
of 2522 items matched these constraints and were initially included in this exami-
nation. Prior to the quantitative statistical analysis, we manually checked the titles,
abstracts and keywords of the identified documents and those irrelevant publications
were removed. In the end, 2211 records were created for this investigation.
To fulfill the objectives of the quantitative analysis and visualization of the
retrieved documents, we need to adopt some advanced bibliometric tools. Biblio-
metrics is based on quantitative methods designed to identify, describe, and evaluate
published research (Bretas & Alon, 2021; Garfield, 1979). Its use of scientific map-
ping and graphical presentation of reproducible statistics reduces the subjective bias
of literature reviews on the one hand, and overcomes the limitations of diagnosis
and the error-prone nature of manual summarization on the other (Su & Lee, 2010;
Tariq et al., 2021; van Eck & Waltman, 2010). Gradually, the ideas and theories of
bibliometrics have become an invaluable manner for many scholars to explore and
discover new knowledge in academic research (Qin et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2020a,
b, c). In response to this trend, many advanced algorithms and sophisticated vis-
ual analysis tools have been developed to help scholars quickly perform bibliomet-
ric analysis. In this paper, we apply two bibliometric tools Bibliometrix and VOS
viewer that are more mature at this stage. Bibliometrix is a powerful open-source
tool developed by Aria and Cuccurullo (2017), which supports a recommended
workflow to perform bibliometric analysis aimed at performing comprehensive
scientific mapping work. By using this tool, we accomplished almost all the bib-
liometric parts of this paper, that is, the performance analysis and science mapping
analysis of the collected records, including publication trend, most relevant sources,
most influential papers and authors, conceptual structure, and intellectual and social
structure. As an equally excellent structured analysis software, VOS viewer is more
focused on the graphical representation of bibliometric maps (van Eck & Walt-
man, 2010). With the assistance of its bibliographic coupling procedure, this paper
achieves an in-depth exploration and examination of the intellectual structure of the
core publications of AI&ED.

Phase 2: Literature Review

In the first phase, we utilized bibliometric analysis to provide an objective, but only
cursory, understanding of the intrinsic structure and overall extrinsic performance of

13
 Journal of the Knowledge Economy

the AI&ED domain. This macroscopic model of mathematical statistics appears to

be more extensive and clearly demonstrates the connections between different attrib-
utes, but it does not allow for profound qualitative conclusions to be drawn. In view
of this, clusters formed by core knowledge streams in the bibliographic network
based on AI&ED publications are reviewed qualitatively and manually in order to
summarize the hot spots and gaps in current knowledge on different topics and thus
answer specific research questions. Although the traditional process of qualitative
literature analysis can be laced with viewer subjectivity, the benefits of this approach
are well recognized (Vallaster et al., 2019). Besides, as Gaur and Kumar (2018)
stated, it is the combination of content analysis with other methods that facilitates its
tremendous potential. Undoubtedly, bibliometrics perfectly matches the traditional
content review (Ante et al., 2021). The complementary content analysis allows us to
identify hot spots and blind spots in the various research tributaries in AI&ED, thus
prompting subsequent research directions to be discovered.

Results of Bibliometric Analysis

Performance Analysis

In this part, we adopt several performance indicators in bibliometrics to provide val-

uable insights into the AI&ED field. Concretely, we focus on the publication trend,
most relevant sources and most influential papers and authors.

Publication Trend

The 2211 documents included in the final dataset generate the annual scientific
production in the field of AI&ED, as depicted in Fig. 2. Studies on AI&ED started

Fig. 2  Annual scientific production

13
Journal of the Knowledge Economy

in 1986, when Yamashiro posted their seminal work in which online secure-econ-
omy preventive control of power system was presented based on pattern recog-
nition (Yamashiro, 1986). Although research on this issue has received atten-
tion from the scientific community since then, the published studies on AI&ED
increased dramatically until approximately 2016, especially during the period
from 2018 to 2021. The exponential growth pattern of the field in recent years
suggests two facts. The extensive application of AI to economic development and
relevant areas is a very recent phenomenon. On the flip side, there exists a fierce
argument in management research within AI’s role in the achievement of eco-
nomic development. According to the visible observed trend in Fig. 2, research
on AI&ED is still immature and in the stage of infancy. With the deepening of AI
technology, we can expect a great deal of research in the future dedicated to fur-
ther enhancing domain knowledge on economic research through AI.

Most Relevant Sources

Overall, the 2211 selected documents cover 1096 different sources. Figure 3
sets out the international panorama of the top 20 most relevant sources in the
AI&ED field. In this case, we could easily find that the top source comes from
“Sustainability” with a total number of 61 publications updated to 2021. The
“IEEE Access” owns the second rank with 60 publications, followed by “Ener-
gies” (39 publications). With the same number of 39 publications, “Expert
Systems with Applications” is in the fourth position. In this regard, investiga-
tors concerned with the AI&ED topic need to be particularly attentive to these
sources. Moreover, Fig. 4 provides the year-wise growth of the top 5 sources over
the period 1986–2021. The temporal evolution of these sources demonstrates that

Fig. 3  Most relevant sources

13
 Journal of the Knowledge Economy

Fig. 4  Source dynamics

the majority of journals are distributed in a growing trend. In particular, “IEEE

Access,” “Sustainability,” “Energies,” and “Journal of Intelligent & Fuzzy Sys-
tems” become productive during the last lustrum. Instead, “Expert Systems with
Applications” exhibits a slower increase trajectory in recent years.

Most Influential Papers and Authors

Citations for an article are regarded as an appropriate manner to measure its influ-
ence and authority in the field (Wang et al., 2021a). Given this backdrop, highly
cited documents over the period 1986 to 2021 in the AI&ED field are assessed,
and the top 10 cited publications are exhibited in Table 1. Nevertheless, the total
number of citations (TC) per se does not completely determine the quality of
an article, and the time factor usually needs to be considered. Thus, the average
number of citations received each year (TC/Y) is also generally deployed as an
effective metric for an article’s impact.
Table 1 lists the specific TC and TC/Y across the top 10 documents. Also, the
other useful information on them is specified. Evidence from Table 1 indicates that
more than half of the publications have been cited more than 300 times in total.
Besides, two observations could be obtained from this table. In the first place, five
of these documents were pressed before the year 2010, and five after 2010. Sur-
prisingly, the article titled “Automated detection of COVID-19 cases using deep
neural networks with X-ray images”, published in 2020, earned a whopping 622
citations. The sudden appearance of the novel coronavirus in 2019 has brought
a great impact on the life and health of people all over the world. To accurately
detect and diagnose potential people suffering from this disease, an automated
assisted diagnosis tool named DarkCovidNet based on deep neural networks
was developed by Ozturk et al. (2020). Furthermore, the article called “Brain

13
 Table 1  Citation analysis of the top 10 documents ordered by the TC
No Author(s) Title Year Journal TC TC/Y

1 Ozturk et al Automated detection of COVID-19 cases using deep neural 2020 Computers in Biology and Medicine 622 207.3
networks with X-ray images
2 Latora & Marchiori Economic small-world behavior in weighted networks 2003 The European Physical Journal B—Condensed Matter and 503 25.2
Journal of the Knowledge Economy

Complex Systems
3 Leitao Agent-based distributed manufacturing control: A state-of- 2009 Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence 464 33.1
the-art survey
4 Lu et al Brain Intelligence: Go beyond Artificial Intelligence 2018 Mobile Networks and Applications volume 409 81.8
5 Ding et al A survey on security control and attack detection for indus- 2018 Neurocomputing 363 72.6
trial cyber-physical systems
6 Chen et al Application of neural networks to an emerging financial mar- 2003 Computers & Operations Research 239 12
ket: forecasting and trading the Taiwan Stock Index
7 Kaytez et al Forecasting electricity consumption: A comparison of regres- 2015 International Journal of Electrical Power & Energy Systems 226 28.3
sion analysis, neural networks and least squares support
vector machines
8 Paya et al Artificial neural network based fault diagnostics of rotating 1997 Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing 220 8.5
machinery using wavelet transforms as a preprocessor
9 Boros et al An implementation of logical analysis of data 2000 IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering 213 9.3
10 Chen et al Energy management for a power-split plug-in hybrid electric 2014 IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology 178 19.8
vehicle based on dynamic programming and neural net-
works

13
 Journal of the Knowledge Economy

Intelligence: Go beyond Artificial Intelligence” on the list, despite being published

as recently as 2018, has 409 citations (Lu et al., 2018). A novel technology con-
cept named brain intelligence was introduced in their work to break through the
many limitations of extant AI. Secondly, in terms of research contents, AI tech-
nologies have penetrated various areas of the economy concerned, such as finance,
energy and machinery, and are increasingly playing an essential role.
A total of 6871 authors participated in the study on the AI&ED domain, and
Fig. 5 depicts the top 10 leading authors in the analyzed dataset. In the specific case
of productivity, the top five authors, including Li Y, Hele M, Magazzino C, Wang
Y, and Zhang Y, produced 17, 16, 14, 11, and 10 articles respectively. In contrast,
the last five authors mostly yielded eight articles. In a nutshell, the distribution of
research results in this area is somewhat scattered and lacks core leaders.

Science Mapping

With respect to the analysis at the science mapping level, a series of bibliometric
methods are exploited here to identify the conceptual, intellectual and social struc-
tures hidden in AI&ED issues.

Conceptual Structure

Keywords are a high level of abstraction and generalization of an article’s research

content, which empower a good way for scholars to discern the research topic and
capture potential trends (Wang et al., 2020a, b, c; Zheng et al., 2016).
Several dominant themes are usually shaped in the development of a particular
domain within the research. To this end, Bibliometrix provides the strategic dia-
gram function to identify themes in different phases based on the centrality and
density ranking. On the basis of co-occurrence analysis for the author’s keywords,

Fig. 5  Most relevant authors

13
Journal of the Knowledge Economy

the comprehensive strategic diagram of AI&ED research from 1986 to 2021 is con-
structed as presented in Fig. 6. As a result, the nutshell overview of the dominant
research topics on AI&ED is highlighted. Obviously, the X-axis (centrality) and
Y-axis (density) split the two-dimensional space into four different regions (i.e.,
quadrants). In this setting, four types of themes with different meanings are clearly
distinguished (Cobo et al., 2011). Centrality gauges the level of inter-cluster interac-
tion, whereas density measures the level of intra-cluster cohesion (Forliano et al.,
2021). More to the point, themes that fall in the first quadrant (upper-right quadrat)
are usually well-developed and are significant in shaping the field of study. They
have high centrality and density values and are usually referred to as motor themes.
A theme is characterized by low centrality and high-density values, which is posi-
tioned in the second quadrant (upper-left quadrat) as a highly-developed and isolated
theme. Diametrically opposed to the thematic characteristics of the first quadrant,
themes in the third quadrant (bottom-left quadrat) are not only low in centrality but
also low in density, with disappearing or emerging themes gathering here. Lastly,
basic and transversal themes usually lie in the fourth quadrant (bottom-right quad-
rat) with high centrality and low-density values (Lam-Gordillo et al., 2020). Visible
here is that each theme cluster is composed of a number of keywords, and its name
is determined by the most frequent keyword. Besides, the higher the frequency of
keywords per theme, the larger the area of the circle will be accordingly.
Therefore, five prevalent themes are finally identified in the diagram. Research
related to “artificial intelligence,” “big data,” and “Internet of things” is aligned to
the first quadrant, suggesting research on these topics dominates and profoundly
influences other topics in the AI&ED field. The developed but isolated theme in
the second quadrant, namely “neural network,” “optimization,” and “energy

Fig. 6  Strategic diagrams of AI&ED research (1986–2021)

13
 Journal of the Knowledge Economy

management,” should be given sufficient attention to breaking down the silos of

research. Interestingly, related studies on “machine learning”, “data mining” and
“classification” are recognized as disappearing or emerging themes, which to some
extent foreshadows future research frontiers. Not surprisingly, the problems about
“forecasting” become the general and broadly researched themes. How AI boosts
economic development and finding effective paths to it will be a topic of continuous
discussion in the future.

Intellectual and Social Structure

After examining the conceptual structure concerning the AI&ED field, the intel-
lectual and social structure would be further revealed in this part. To be specific,
we are committed to visualizing co-citation network and country collaboration
map in the AI&ED field. Co-citation analysis is used for the analysis of the
cited sources, which allows us to quickly capture the mainstream source com-
munities. In the same way, Fig. 7 outlines the three source clusters amongst the

Fig. 7  Co-citation network of cited sources in the AI&ED field

13
Journal of the Knowledge Economy

50 most influential sources. In the first cluster (shown in red), 16 sources are
detected, and high-quality journals such as “Neurocomputing,” “Expert Systems
with Applications,” and “Decision Support Systems” occupy the main position.
18 sources make up the largest Cluster 2 (shown in blue), in which the repre-
sentative sources include “Applied Energy,” “Renewable and Sustainable Energy
Reviews,” “Energy,” and so forth. In the last cluster (shown in green), 16 sources
are more dispersed in the figure, with “Nature” and “Science” journals occupying
the center of the diagram.
With consideration to the prevalence of cooperation and linkages between
authors from different regions or countries, we conduct a collaboration-based
assessment of international cooperation. By performing the Collaboration World-
Map function in the Bibliometrix and setting the minimum edges as three, Fig. 8
sheds light on the social structure within the AI&ED domain. Overall, there are
627 pairs of country/region key cooperation on this map. At the same time, the
higher the productivity of a country or region, the darker its color is, while the
connection of the lines indicates the presence of collaboration, and the more
robust the line, the higher the rate of collaboration. The assessment shows that
China, the USA, and India are among the world leaders in terms of individual
country or regional contributions with 624, 412, and 210 publications, respec-
tively. Another interesting finding shows that scholars from the USA and China
are fostering the strongest collaborations, and they are building strong ties with
their counterparts around the world. In fact, the highest rate of collaboration
between the USA and Chinese scholars has also been maintained, with a total of
66 co-authored articles. As it clearly appears, there are still several authors from

Fig. 8  Country collaboration map

13
 Journal of the Knowledge Economy

different countries or regions who are not involved in this area of communication
and collaboration.

AI and Economic Development

Bibliographic coupling occurs when two publications cite a third common publica-
tion in their bibliographies (Wang et al., 2021b). As a similarity measure, it is often
used to cluster similar research streams. Obviously, the magnitude of coupling is
proportional to the relevance of the research topic and content between publications.
The significant difference compared to co-citation analysis is that bibliographic cou-
pling analysis can better identify the distribution of recent research topics and cur-
rent trends in AI&ED, which can inspire us to ponder about future research (van
Oorschot et al., 2018). Thus, with the assistance of the VOS viewer tool, Fig. 9 visu-
alizes the coherent bibliographic network of the AI&ED literature to detect similar
subject areas, and determines the mindset of core researchers.
Since the bibliographic network generated by the initial 2211 publications can-
not identify the number of controllable and valid clusters, we set some filtering
conditions and modulate some parameters to derive the number of clusters that can
be analyzed. Expressly, to obtain core insights and capture closely linked research
results within each cluster, we eliminate unconnected items to show the largest set of
connected items. What is more, in our study, we adjusted the minimum cluster size
and set it to 12 instead of the default of 1, which makes the final number of clusters
more concentrated. In fact, we have also fine-tuned the final rendering of the graph
by changing the repulsion parameter to -1, while leaving the attraction parameter as

Fig. 9  Bibliographic network of AI&ED publications

13
Journal of the Knowledge Economy

default. Finally, Fig. 9 generates five highly distinguishable clusters that are given
different colors to highlight. In what follows, this paper will review these five rel-
atively independent research streams in detail. The five presented broad research
topics are: AI supports intelligent decision-making ("AI supports Intelligent Deci-
sion-Making" subsection), AI empowers social governance ("AI Empowers Social
Governance" Subsection), AI enhances labor and capital ("AI Enhances Labor and
Capital" subsection), AI accelerates Industry 4.0 ("AI Accelerates Industry 4.0" sub-
section) and AI fuels innovation ("AI Fuels Innovation" subsection).

AI supports Intelligent Decision‑Making

In this cluster, how to use AI techniques to maximize successful decision-making in

economic problems becomes the main research focus. Intelligent decision-making
could be generally understood as the application of the knowledge representation
and thinking process of AI into the decision-making theory, by introducing theories
and methods from management, computer science and related disciplines for analy-
sis and comparison, thus providing wise and intelligent aid for managers to make
the right decisions (Niu, 2018). However, the prerequisites for efficient prediction
largely determine the likelihood that intelligent decisions will eventually be real-
ized. Forecasting is based on the historical data of things, through certain scientific
means or logical reasoning, to make estimation, speculation and judgment on the
future development of its situation, and seek the future development law of things.
In recent years, the fact that correct predictions (or forecasts) will lead to successful
decisions and thus provide maximum economic benefits has increased the interest
in predictive modeling. Indeed, in contrast to traditional econometric techniques, AI
technology, with its mighty computing power, has injected new blood into scientific
forecasting, providing more feasible ideas and solutions for forecasting technology.
Also, it significantly improves the accuracy and reliability of forecasting and pro-
vides decision support capabilities for various industries that beyond traditional sta-
tistical-based analysis (Binner et al., 2004). As a consequence, AI-based predictive
algorithms are increasingly being considered in various areas of human economic
creation.
Energy is of strategic importance to the development and social welfare of any
economy (Cen & Wang, 2019). Effective forecasting of energy demand, consumption
and prices is directly related to the compatibility between the economy and the envi-
ronment. For example, Ardakani and Ardehali (2014) developed an optimal regres-
sion and ANN (artificial neural network) model for predicting EEC (electric energy
consumption) based on several optimization methods, examined the effects of differ-
ent historical data types on the accuracy of EEC prediction, and then made long-term
predictions for two different types of economies, Iran and the United States, respec-
tively. In order to improve the accuracy of oil market price prediction, Cen and Wang
(2019) used Long Short Term Memory, a representative model of deep learning, to
fit crude oil prices. Moreover, swarm intelligence approaches, including artificial bee
colony (ABC) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) techniques were introduced to
evaluate the electrical energy demand in Turkey (Kıran et al., 2012). Also for Turkey,

13
 Journal of the Knowledge Economy

Uzlu et al. (2014) applied the ANN model and TLBO (teaching–learning-based opti-
mization) algorithm to estimate its energy consumption, which also showed good pre-
diction performance. However, a single model cannot always meet the requirements
of time series prediction and fuel consumption variation (Liu et al., 2016). In paral-
lel, the fact that energy consumption involves a large number of parameters makes
its forecasting a complex and challenging task to carry out. To this end, combining
the excellent predictive models available is the most straightforward response, and it
has proven to be effective (Li et al., 2018). Predicting the interrelationship between
energy activities and real economic fluctuations is also further explored by relying
on AI algorithms. In different domestic and international environments, varying oil
price shock incentives can cause different oil price shocks and have different mac-
roeconomic impacts. In response to this problem, Ju et al. (2016) proposed an ontol-
ogy-supported case-based reasoning approach to an incentive-oriented AI early warn-
ing system, namely the relationship between oil price shocks and the economy early
warning system, for predicting the linkage changes between macroeconomic and oil
price shocks in China. Furthermore, the economic dependence between urban devel-
opment policies and energy efficiency improvement was revealed by building a neu-
ral network model (Skiba et al., 2017). In addition to the energy sector, other areas
involved in economic development are also actively incorporating AI technologies to
achieve the best forecasting results, such as the spatial prediction of land subsidence
susceptibility (Arabameri et al., 2020), the prediction of standardized precipitation
evapotranspiration index (Soh et al., 2018) and predicting the monthly closing price
of major USA indices (Weng et al., 2018).
In fact, forecasting can also be considered as the process of filling in the miss-
ing information, i.e., using the information already collected to generate informa-
tion that we do not yet have or that we expect to have. Based on the vast amount of
available data, AI technology can quickly and efficiently make diagnoses or judg-
ments to help people make the best decisions in a short period of time, minimizing
economic risk at the organizational, industry and national levels. At the end of 2019,
the sudden onslaught of the novel coronavirus 2019 not only posed a huge threat
to people’s lives and health, but also caused a heavy blow to economic develop-
ment worldwide. As the epidemic continues to spread around the world, diagnos-
ing infected patients has become one of the urgent tasks to be solved at that time.
For this reason, many radiological images have been widely used for the detection
of COVID-19. In particular, the integration of AI technology allows the diagnosis
of patients with COVID-19 infections at a significant advantage (Tsiknakis et al.,
2020). For instance, Ozturk et al. (2020) presented a new model for the automatic
detection of COVID-19 using raw chest x-ray images. The model can achieve an
accuracy of 98.08% for the classification of binary classes and 87.02% for the clas-
sification of multiple classes. It is worth pointing out that despite the widespread use
and effectiveness of AI in fraud detection, the emergence of new fraudulent vectors
has posed severe challenges to fraud detection in the AI framework (Ryman-Tubb
et al., 2018). Besides, the boom in the fitness industry in recent years has led to a
critical need for scientific and practical instructional programs. In light of this, real-
time monitoring and guidance based on exercisers’ daily fitness data, supported by
AI technology, has become a trend for future fitness applications (Yong et al., 2018).

13
Journal of the Knowledge Economy

The development of computers and information technology gave rise to the crea-
tion of a decision support system (DSS) in the mid-1970s to help decision-mak-
ers improve the level and quality of their decisions. Suffice it to say that the rapid
advancement of AI technology has given people a wonderful aspiration for the intel-
ligence of traditional DSS (Pinter et al., 1995). Later, DSS was combined with AI
and expert system technologies, and the prototype of an intelligent decision support
system (IDSS) was outlined, enabling the original system to cope with more com-
plex and uncertain decision scenarios. With this opportunity, IDSS has been widely
studied by scholars and involved in many human economic activities. For example,
to achieve effective management and rapid response to different customer needs
in transportation enterprises, He et al. (2014) proposed a general framework that
integrates intelligent technologies as components into the architecture of service-
oriented group decision support system, and skillfully used AI technology to solve
the conflict problem in distributed group decision-making. The multi-agent system
theory and techniques in AI likewise provide essential insights for the develop-
ment of DSS. To address the complex issues in agricultural development, Xue et al.
(2013) designed an agent-based regional agricultural economy decision support sys-
tem (RAEDSS) to simulate and evaluate the impact of policies on rural development
under different scenarios. Considering that intelligent decision-making should have
the ability to explore and discover uncertain environments, scholars have tried to
combine fuzzy logic with IDSS to enhance its knowledge representation and rea-
soning capabilities. Using fuzzy cognitive maps, Albayrak et al. (2021) developed
an IDSS to achieve high yield of honey. In addition, uncertain production goals are
extremely common in production plants, and this uncertainty leads to the invalida-
tion of regular management. In view of this, Rodriguez et al. (2020) proposed an
IDSS for production planning based on machine learning and fuzzy logic to solve
the closed-loop supply chain management problem.

AI Empowers Social Governance

At present, AI technology is developing deeply and AI application scenarios are

enriching, which then calls out a new governance concept and governance form for
society. Overall, the new pattern of AI-powered social governance is in the prelim-
inary exploration stage (Mania, 2022). What is certain, however, is that AI tech-
nology has been used more widely than ever in recent years. These wide ranges of
applications are not only reflected in common daily aspects such as image analysis,
face recognition and big data analysis, but also gradually rise to the level of major
social rulings and human emotional cognition applications (Coglianese & Lehr,
2017; Huang et al., 2019). At the city level, the great strength of AI in processing
big data has contributed to a major change in the urban fabric, a prospect greatly
facilitated by the emerging smart city concept that promotes the combination of sen-
sors and big data through the Internet of things (Allam & Dhunny, 2019). The core
idea of the smart city emphasizes the underlying support of big data, which requires
not only tens of thousands of data, but also the integration of multi-dimensional
data. This is well evidenced by the full impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The

13
 Journal of the Knowledge Economy

recent COVID-19 pandemic has prompted a great deal of thought by many schol-
ars about many vital issues and potential complexities for organizations and socie-
ties (Dwivedi et al., 2020; Iandolo et al., 2021), particularly the controversy over
data sharing related to the concept of urban health and safe cities (Allam & Jones,
2020). On one side, strengthening standardized protocols to increase data sharing
will not only help the efficient development of epidemic prevention and control, but
also facilitate the further construction and design of smart cities, as well as lead to
better global understanding and management of the same. However, it is undeniable
that sharing urban health data has the potential to impact the economy and politics
of a country or region. Besides, as AI continues to permeate all aspects of human
society, some administrative agencies are attempting to employ intelligent algo-
rithms to improve the intelligence of government governance. On a technical level,
this is entirely possible. Hildebrandt (2018) pointed out that data-driven artificial
legal intelligence may be much more successful in predicting the content of positive
law. Likewise, profound developments in information technology are changing the
way banks work, relying more on reliable quantitative information from online and
credit bureaus, contributing to AI-based decision-making (Jakšič & Marinc, 2019).
Finally, over recent years, AI technology is also quietly changing the face and opera-
tion of other social industries such as education (Mehmood et al., 2017; Williams,
2019), marketing (Rust, 2020) and accounting (Moll & Yigitbasioglu, 2019), seek-
ing to improve economic efficiency.
However, we should also see that while AI accelerates economic development
and promotes social governance to a new level, it brings additional challenges to
human society in terms of legal norms, moral ethics and governance guidelines that
should not be underestimated. Firstly, as mentioned earlier, big data gives AI enough
valuable data to support it. Generally speaking, the larger and more dimensional the
data, the more promising the final effect of intelligent algorithms, which inevita-
bly involves individual-level data analysis, collection and application. Scholars have
long debated the protection of personal data and concerns related to privacy (Kak,
2018). On the one hand, some scholars have called for striking as much of a bal-
ance as possible between data protection and data-related concerns (Dwivedi et al.,
2020). On the other hand, some scholars pointed out that no one owns data and that
property rights protection of data is not appropriate to promote better privacy, more
innovation or technological progress, but is more likely to stifle freedom of expres-
sion, freedom of information and technological progress. Thus, the case for prop-
erty rights to data is not compelling, and there is no need to create new property
rights for data (Determann, 2018). Secondly, Allam and Newman (2018) cautioned
against the blind acceptance of technology and encouraged further embedding
into the social fabric. Such a reminder stems in large part from the ethical issues
of fairness, responsibility or subjectivity that AI can raise. Research in AI could
be roughly divided into three stages: mechanical AI, thinking AI and feeling AI.
While mechanical AI is already mature and thinking AI is developing rapidly, the
highest level of feeling AI is progressing slowly (Huang et al., 2019). Since AI at
this phase does not possess self-awareness, AI platforms are not neutral technolo-
gies, they are designed with a purpose and exhibit bias and human rights violations
(Bourne, 2019). Additionally, government agencies are beginning to widely adopt

13
Journal of the Knowledge Economy

AI technology for constitutional democracy and administrative decision-making,

and concerns have increased over digital robots replacing the government sector. At
the same time, reliance on AI has also led to an increasing challenge to human sub-
jectivity. Therefore, in response to the above challenges, human workers must pay
more attention to the extension of the empathy and emotional dimension in their
work (Huang et al., 2019). On the flip side, creating a new culture that incorporates
the principles of democracy, rule of law and human rights through the design of AI
as well as considers diversity in the design and implementation of algorithms is a
viable solution for the future (Nemitz, 2018; Turner Lee, 2018).

AI Enhances Labor and Capital

The debate over the conclusion that AI enhances the quality of labor as well as the
quality of capital. In the traditional economic development model, the three pro-
duction factors, i.e., capital, labor and total factor productivity (TFP), determine
the development dynamics of the economy. When the two physical factors, capital
and labor, rise in quantity or are used more efficiently, they contribute to economic
development. Of course, an increase in TFP due to technological or innovative
advances would also generate economic development. Collectively, it seems to be
an undisputed fact that the widespread use of AI promotes economic development.
More importantly, a large body of empirical literature supports this view as well
(Chattopadhyay & Rangarajan, 2014).
Firstly, the development of AI has significantly reduced the cost of traditional
automation while creating an opportunity for the era of intelligent automation (von
Joerg & Carlos, 2022). Although traditional automation technologies have led to
dramatic increases in labor productivity, specific and homogeneous settings, allow
them to perform only simple and repetitive tasks. In contrast to the former, the era
of intelligent automation has created a new kind of virtual labor force, which can
be considered as a new factor of production. This phenomenon, on the one hand,
diminishes the dependence on manual labor at the current stage of production and
triggers the substitution of capital for labor (Autor, 2015). On the other hand, due
to its self-learning and self-renewal characteristics, AI will effectively solve the
complex labor needs of the many automated jobs in real life (Bahrammirzaee et al.,
2011). In particular, this change in the structure of production factors will rapidly
produce high-end labor, which in turn will significantly boost economic develop-
ment (Vivarelli, 2014).
Secondly, with powerful and innovative AI technologies, the efficiency of the
existing capital and labor has been enhanced to an unprecedented degree, while
enabling the skills and capabilities of labor and physical capital to be also supple-
mented and improved. In fact, in addition to the above-mentioned substitution rela-
tionships, there are also many complementary relationships between AI and human
intelligence (Huin et al., 2003). With human–machine collaboration, workers’ pro-
ductivity can not only be effectively utilized and extended, but also be motivated to
focus on the areas they are good at and thus do more creative work. The scenario of
human–machine integration has led to increasing labor productivity (Wolff, 2014).

13
 Journal of the Knowledge Economy

For example, accurate estimation of the local scour depth concerning bridge piers is
crucial for engineering design and management, which places higher demands on the
professionalism of bridge engineers. To this end, a new hybrid smart artificial firefly
colony algorithm-based support vector regression model was developed to predict
the scour depth near bridge piers by Chou and Pham (2017). The results showed that
the model could effectively assist the concerned staff in constructing safe and cost-
effective bridge substructures. In terms of improving capital quality, as described in
the “AI Supports Intelligent Decision-Making” section, AI is able to model, predict
and ultimately optimize decisions in real time from massive amounts of data in the
production process. It can almost completely avoid the problems of low accuracy,
low integration and low adaptability in production activities, and achieve intelli-
gence in the production process, thus realizing capital efficiency improvements. For
the manufacturing industry, this is particularly evident. AI has become an important
driver for intelligent manufacturing technology innovation, promoting economic
development and improving people’s quality of life. Research results showed that
the adoption of highly interconnected and deeply integrated intelligent production
lines would lead to significant improvements in manufacturing productivity as well
as a corresponding reduction in the number of system instructions (Hu et al., 2018).
Finally, AI’s ability to increase TFP across the board is well documented, and
some existing studies even categorize it as a new factor of production that will fur-
ther fuel economic development in the future.1 Nevertheless, in the long run, many
scholars are divided on the question of whether the progress of AI will play a sus-
tainable role in promoting economic development. The negative school of thought
believes that AI will replace labor and take over human jobs, which will likely lead
to unemployed people much faster than productivity can be increased (Vermeulen
et al., 2018). In a situation where the labor market is disrupted, income inequality
and mass unemployment among workers are probably creating a further future of
high unemployment and even economic stagnation (Frey & Osborne, 2017). As a
consequence, AI’s boost in the economy is seen as unsustainable (Vermeulen et al.,
2018). As noted by Gasteiger and Prettner (2017), human dependence on AI would
eventually lead to an economic rout, as the utilization of automation inhibited wage
development and thus investment growth. In contrast, the positive school of thought
argues that while AI can rapidly replace labor, the AI revolution will not necessarily
have a fatal impact on employment. Specifically, on the one hand, the development
and application of AI technology still require many human resources for research
and development and design, as well as the operation and maintenance of AI equip-
ment cannot be separated from the participation of senior technical personnel. This
demand for high-end human capital creates a higher economic value, but of course
also puts forward higher requirements for the quality of the future workforce (Chen
et al., 2009). On the other hand, the skill requirements of jobs are dynamic, and
the impact of AI is likely to generate new labor demand and new job opportunities
(Frank et al., 2019). The historical experience of the industrial revolution tells us
that at this stage, human beings are likely to be in a short transitional period with

1
https://​www.​accen​ture.​com

13
Journal of the Knowledge Economy

frictional unemployment, followed by economic prosperity (Vermeulen et al., 2018).

On top of everything else, some observers consider that the impact of AI on eco-
nomic development and employment depends heavily on institutions and policies,
and that inappropriate labor market and education policies may reduce the positive
impact of AI and automation on employment (Aghion et al., 2019).

AI Accelerates Industry 4.0

According to our consensus, the Industry 1.0 era was marked by the invention of
the steam engine by the Englishman Watt, which exponentially increased the effi-
ciency of production technologies that previously relied on human and animal labor.
The widespread availability of electricity has inaugurated the era of Industry 2.0. In
this context, the productivity of factories has been developed and further improved.
The Industry 3.0 era then witnessed the advent of computers and automation (Syam
& Sharma, 2018). And in 2013, as the German government introduced the concept
of Industry 4.0, it instantly attracted the attention of various countries and indus-
trial giants (Carayannis et al., 2022). Industry 4.0 can be characterized as the emer-
gence of cyber-physical systems involving entirely new capabilities for people and
machines (Mhlanga, 2020). Even though these capabilities rely on the previous
phase of Industry 3.0, the continued incorporation of extraordinary technologies
has allowed for a long optimization of the third computerized industrial revolution
(Sharabov & Tsochev, 2020). At the same time, the technology embedded in Indus-
try 4.0 has created a new way of human life at this stage. Underpinned by these
disruptive technological advances, Industry 4.0 aims to blur the boundaries among
the physical, digital and biological worlds (Huynh et al., 2020). Simply put, it is
expected to establish a highly flexible, personalized and digital production pattern of
products and services, where the original industry boundaries will be broken down
and the industry chain will be redefined (Sharabov & Tsochev, 2020). Journal arti-
cles and related reports in the context of Industry 4.0 indicate a huge demand for
developing reliable and usable AI for real-world applications (Lee & Lim, 2021). It
is foreseeable that AI will play an integral role in the future production paradigm of
Industry 4.0 (Skrop, 2018). There seems to be a consensus among social scientists
that AI is the key technology of the fourth industrial revolution (Liu et al., 2021).
The principal features of Industry 4.0 are technological transformations, digi-
tal revolution and AI (Wang et al., 2020a, b, c). More precisely, Sanz et al. (2021)
pointed out that intelligent and automated solutions should be included in industrial
processes that employ AI (AI-driven framework) to be competitive in the Industry
4.0 paradigm that essentially affects manufacturing. For this reason, a great deal of
research has been conducted on how to combine and embed AI into the existing
Industry 4.0 manufacturing value chain (Peres et al., 2020). To meet Industry 4.0
manufacturing standards, Nasr et al. (2020) proposed a hybrid adaptive neuro-fuzzy
inference system (ANFIS) based on a multi-objective particle swarm optimization
approach to obtain optimal combinations of milling parameters and matching rates
to minimize feed force, depth force, and surface roughness. Artificial neural network
model for dynamic behavior optimization of robotic arms, an AI technology, was

13
 Journal of the Knowledge Economy

designed to improve the sustainability of Industry 4.0 (Azizi, 2020). Furthermore,

more places for AI in Industry 4.0 have been identified and perceived by research-
ers, such as predictive analytics, predictive maintenance, industrial robotics, inven-
tory management and computer vision (Sharabov & Tsochev, 2020). Collectively,
industrial AI excels in five dimensions: infrastructures, data, algorithms, decision-
making, and objectives (Peres et al., 2020). There is no doubt that the role of AI is
central to the factory of the future, driven by the Industry 4.0 vision and reflected in
the great blueprint for the factory of the future (Bécue et al., 2021). From an indus-
trial perspective, AI can be viewed as enablers for systems to sense their environ-
ment, handle the data they acquire and address complicated tasks, as well as study
from experience to enhance their ability to tackle particular challenges (Peres et al.,
2020). While a high degree of autonomy is one of the core requirements for the
future of Industry 4.0, the injection of additional human intelligence may be more
beneficial to the operation of future factories and remains true, at least from this
phase (Peres et al., 2020). In this regard, different levels of autonomous systems are
more in line with the differentiated needs of factories at this stage.
From the above description, we can get that the basic concept of Industry 4.0
lies in the organic combination of hardware and software devices, so as to build a
smart factory where people, machines, and resources communicate and collaborate
with each other (Dopico et al., 2016). Currently, Industry 4.0 is a common trend
in international development, bringing new opportunities to the economic expan-
sion of many countries (Pham-Duc et al., 2021). However, it is not an easy task to
truly implement the Industry 4.0 framework in industrial manufacturing processes
(Sanz et al., 2021). The realization of this digital revolution is costly, and it is even
sometimes impossible to quantify (Trifan & Buzatu, 2020). In fact, people are ques-
tioning whether the era of Industry 4.0 will ever exist, because the event space is
infinite. And the actual software and hardware will never cover the infinite event
spaces (Vogt, 2021). Besides, despite the potential of industrial AI, a large amount
of training data and a large amount of computing power are required to make it suf-
fer from a very precarious end as well (Sharabov & Tsochev, 2020). What is worse,
real factory environments provide unique and difficult challenges for which organi-
zations are not ready (Peres et al., 2020). And the physical nature of the systems
and processes that industrial AI deals with leads to special constraints that other
types of AI do not face (Bécue et al., 2021). For instance, the dynamics of anoma-
lous and expected behaviors can cause the original fixed settings to be unable to
accurately determine the boundaries between them, making it difficult to detect new
threats, which can eventually lead to a series of industrial production security prob-
lems (Luo et al., 2021). Still, AI may have a perfect niche for its flourishing and
implementation in industrial environments, as its applications can answer different
questions and possibilities in each of the main pillars of the Industry 4.0 construct
(Dopico et al., 2016).

13
Journal of the Knowledge Economy

AI Fuels Innovation

It is now widely accepted that the advent of AI technology has disruptively improved
productivity, but its radiating effect of driving innovation through economic diffu-
sion is rarely talked about or even valued. Innovative thinking and creative ideas
are becoming mainstream as people slowly get used to the pounding of the fourth
industrial revolution era (Chen, 2022). Imagine that if imagination is lost, progress
may only be a short-lived blessing (Shakir et al., 2019). Mechanical improvements
or instability have a long history of impacting innovation, as has AI, endowed with
human intelligence (Shakir et al., 2019). Within a business perspective, innovation is
a multi-stage process by which organizations transform ideas into new or improved
products, services or processes to successfully move forward, compete and differen-
tiate in the marketplace (Buhmann & Fieseler, 2021). Since AI at this stage is pri-
marily characterized by expanding all aspects of human performance, it is not possi-
ble to achieve a high degree of autonomy, or even full autonomy, for the time being.
We may question whether AI can take up the burden of influencing or even domi-
nating the innovation management process. At first glance, the vision of AI being
used to facilitate innovation purposes seems to be nonsensical. After all, the abil-
ity to innovate has traditionally been considered a uniquely human survival capa-
bility (Haefner et al., 2021). So far, decisions in the innovation process have been
made by humans. Just imagine what it means when they are replaced by machines
(Verganti et al., 2020). Nevertheless, along with the gradual blurring of the bounda-
ries between AI and humans, a large number of cases tell us that AI promises to
give birth to different explanations and inventions than before. This groundbreaking
progress suggests that AI can be defined as the invention of an inventive method.
In other words, AI has the ability to increase innovation productivity by helping
human innovators with all the supportive tasks that ignite the creative spark and col-
late innovation propositions based on their merits (Samid, 2021). This is particu-
larly evident in business activities. AI becomes a technology driver for business pat-
tern innovation by steering decisions and automating services to leverage business
practices that improve efficiency and profitability (Anton et al., 2021). Arguably, AI
plays the role of creative enabler and partner to innovation managers in their inno-
vation process (Kakatkar et al., 2020). More broadly, AI does have the potential to
innovate on its own and to disrupt the entire innovation process under conventional
perception, thus fundamentally changing the traditional innovation generation pat-
terns (Hutchinson, 2021). The same view is shared by Cockburn et al. (2018). They
claimed that AI also has the potential to transform the innovation process itself, with
potentially equally far-reaching consequences, and it may dominate the direct impact
over time. Moreover, it is not just about improving the efficiency of research activi-
ties, but about creating new scripts for innovation itself.
Certainly, the great human emphasis on the adoption of AI technology in the inno-
vation process stems mainly from compromise with the reality of the environment.
To begin with, today’s increasingly turbulent and competitive innovation environ-
ment has inevitably created extremely difficult survival conditions. In addition, with
the exponential increase in the amount of information collected by organizations
or companies, limited human resources can no longer demonstrate the confidence

13
 Journal of the Knowledge Economy

to handle the vast amount of information. More importantly, these organizations or

companies are no longer willing or even able to bear the high human cost to cope
with this challenge and carry out innovation activities (Haefner et al., 2021). On the
other hand, AI’s revealed strengths on the road to innovation have forged its current
brilliance. In particular, in addition to meeting human’s high efficiency in product or
service design, AI injects unique sensory experiences into product or service with
its powerful humanization, intelligence and experience interaction, immensely sat-
isfying people’s rich spiritual needs (Wang et al., 2019). Also, a number of outreach
studies are filling and enriching this invigorating field. For the intrinsic mechanism
of AI influencing technological innovation, Liu et al. (2020) gave a possible answer.
They argued that it is because AI ultimately facilitates technological innovation by
accelerating knowledge creation and technology spillover, improving learning and
absorptive capacity, and increasing investment in R&D and talent. Exciting work
on measuring the speed of AI innovation was then developed by Tang et al. (2020).
According to their experiment, 5.26 new researchers were entering AI every hour
in 2019, more than 175 times faster than in the 1990s. Additionally, the experience
of AI to accelerate innovation varies across countries, especially with the dominant
discourse currently committed to it in the West (Alami et al., 2020).
The point has to be made that while AI brings great benefits to innovative work,
it also creates uncertain risks. Since the time when humans are not satisfied with
applying AI to products and services, but rather into the innovation process, result-
ing in new products and new value chains (Davenport & Ronanki, 2018). People are
slowly realizing that too much reliance on AI may generate a major threat in the near
future (Cath, 2018). As such, the concept of responsible innovation is presented to
address the ethical issue of responsibility at the boundary of innovation in AI, which
provides a path for theoretical reflection and realistic response to the innovation and
development of AI (de Saille, 2015). According to Buhmann and Fieseler (2021),
responsible innovation in AI should be reflected in the following points. Foremost,
the responsibility to avoid damage, i.e., risk management methods that should con-
trol potential hazards. Secondly, human-centered, the origin of all innovation is to
serve human beings. Finally, governance responsibility stands for the responsibility
to create and support global governance structures that can facilitate the first two
responsibilities.

Discussions and Implications

This work attempts to provide a bibliometric analysis and a methodological study on

the scientific knowledge of the performance of publications in the field of AI&ED.
For this purpose, a series of activity metrics and precise content analysis are exe-
cuted. The theoretical contributions and implications for practice are discussed in
the following section.

13
Journal of the Knowledge Economy

Theoretical Implications and Roadmap for Future Research

As stated previously, AI technology is commonly applied to all levels of national

economic development, and its driving role is indisputable and has a broad scope
for development. As such, our survey makes several theoretical contributions and
insights for further research on AI applications in the economic field.
Firstly, the result of the publication trend shows that the proliferation of AI in the
economy domain has been unprecedented in recent years. In particular, the advent of
the post-pandemic era has intensified the reliance on and desire for AI for economic
development. As a result, future research efforts are foreseeable. However, as far
as the publication channel is concerned, the quality of the research is not yet high
enough. The percentage of top journals is very low. The intuition behind this embar-
rassing situation may be on the one hand that the collection, analysis and processing
of the underlying economic big data are hindered. On the other hand, the model of
AI serving economic development has not yet matured and is still in a lower quality
period at this stage. Due to the interdisciplinary nature of this field, it is necessary
to strengthen the scenario-based capabilities of the theoretical foundation of AI. In
particular, the consolidation of the theoretical foundation will facilitate the construc-
tion of a well-functioning paradigm. On this basis, we encourage future scholars to
focus on the effectiveness and practicality of interdisciplinary integration to follow
the actual needs of economic development.
Secondly, we provide a list of the most cited work as well as a list of the most
published authors, as this survey ascertains the most influential works and the most
passionately researched scholars. Thus, the hot articles provide a good theoretical
cornerstone for exploring substantial breakthroughs in future research. More impor-
tantly, practitioners can track their latest work and contributions to gain cutting-edge
wisdom and guidance. It is worth noting that the implementation of AI in economic
scenarios requires the joint participation of multiple stakeholders and policy mak-
ers. Highly productive academics’ ambitions often lack practical experience, a gap
that can lead to stalemates and dilemmas in AI execution. Thus, future researchers
can connect multiple parties and actively collaborate to address this potential threat.
More directly, the addition of a community of practitioners will accelerate the explo-
ration and theoretical advancement of the AI&ED field.
Thirdly, a visual topic distribution map is executed to complement the existing
content analysis to present the distribution and focus of current mainstream research
topics. For example, the results of the conceptual structure reveal that researchers
may have greater interest and passion for topics related to deep learning, data min-
ing and classification in the future. Thus, we advocate more future agendas around
these valuable and promising research hotspots for further expansion of the AI&ED
field. However, the problem of AI-based prediction in economic activities remains
the spotlight of research at this phase. For this reason, how to effectively use a large
amount of economic information and improve the systemic as well as scientific
aspects of forecasting issues in economic development has become an urgent con-
cern. In addition, economic problems are often filled with a large amount of uncer-
tainty and ambiguity, which is exacerbated by the emerging COVID-19 pandemic
(Ozturk et al., 2020). Data uncertainty and cognitive uncertainty in forecasting need

13
 Journal of the Knowledge Economy

to be reconsidered. Based on these facts, uncertainty prediction modeling should be

highlighted in future AI&ED problems.
Fourthly, we reveal the collaborative associations and social structure at the coun-
try/regional level, and the relative contribution of each country/region to AI&ED
research is identified. The results show that China is at the top of the world list in
terms of contributions from individual countries or regions. In addition, the USA has
established the strongest academic ties with China. This initiative is to be encour-
aged and supported. The generalizability of AI in solving economic problems needs
to be proven in different countries/regions. Cross-border research collaboration can
improve the applicability and robustness of AI models. For example, comparing dif-
ferences in energy forecasting and warning mechanisms across countries/regions is
an essential subject to be addressed.
Finally, the bibliographic coupling analysis identifies five mainstream knowledge
themes and clusters in the recent AI&ED fields of “intelligent decision-making,”
“social governance,” “labor and capital,” “Industry 4.0,” and “innovation.” The con-
tent analysis traces the research boundaries and trends of the five sub-topics to pro-
vide directional guidance for future research. More importantly, scholars can use the
findings of this survey to focus on new and less-researched issues to promote deeper
adoption of AI in economic development. Specifically, (1) most of the existing arti-
cles repeatedly emphasize the superiority and intelligence of AI in economic deci-
sion-making scenarios, but the existing level of AI technology is only limited to spe-
cific scenarios and settings, forming a single point of breakthrough in the AI field.
Currently, AI-based intelligent decision-making systems for economic activities are
highly prone to fail under slight changes. Therefore, broadening the extension and
stability of intelligent decision-making in economic activities is an important break-
through in the future. Of course, a general-purpose integrated intelligent system is
also one of the directions to consider. (2) Admittedly, AI has greatly enriched and
improved the means of human social governance as well as the efficiency of gov-
ernance. However, risky events in the governance process, such as fairness of judg-
ing, the bias of algorithms and the privacy of users, often trigger governance failure.
Therefore, we propose to include the construction of a rule of law system and ethical
framework for AI in the future research agenda (Turner Lee, 2018). (3) AI is a new
manifestation of technological development and can be regarded as a complex com-
bination of capital and labor. Therefore, how to prevent the “unemployment panic”
caused by the imbalance of labor and capital substitution in the wave of AI reshaping
the economic development paradigm is an urgent issue to be solved in the future.
Moreover, it is also necessary to establish and improve the appropriate institutions.
(4) There is no denying that AI is at the forefront of leading Industry 4.0, enabling the
construction of Industry 4.0 to rise to a new level. However, our review shows that
the AI-driven Industry 4.0 framework is still in the blueprint planning. How to build
out an Industry 4.0 smart factory with practical operations is still the main melody of
the future. (5) AI has great potential to enhance human innovation activities, contrib-
uting to innovation-driven economic development. However, our survey shows that
uncertain risks lie behind the increased efficiency of innovation. To effectively cap-
ture and curb the spillover of these risks, the concept of responsible innovation needs
to be further refined and implemented in the future (Buhmann & Fieseler, 2021).

13
Journal of the Knowledge Economy

Practical Implications

Moreover, the findings of this study also help us summarize a number of practi-
cal implications for future development with the aim of removing obstacles to the
future development path of AI in terms of its widespread acceptance in economic
activities.
Firstly, our bibliometric analysis and content review help practitioners gain a
comprehensive understanding of the current state of development of AI as an emerg-
ing technology in various areas of human economic development. More importantly,
practitioners can increase their confidence that AI will change the future landscape
of economic activity and gain possible guidance for their practice from this work.
Secondly, practitioners can derive highly condensed findings and research
boundaries from bibliometrics to discuss design choices and trade-offs to remove
major barriers and obstacles to the inclusion of AI in economic activities. More
pertinently, practitioners in the AI industry may benefit from our survey for more
nuanced applications and designs.
Thirdly, our social structure analysis identifies the countries/regions that have
achieved more results in the AI&ED field. This finding helps practitioners understand
where to seek appropriate collaboration opportunities or advice (Zhang et al., 2021).
Fourthly, our review argues that AI is rapidly becoming the new frontier of competi-
tive differentiation for economic development in countries around the world. To this
end, the work can help leaders as well as policymakers to capture the potential of AI.
Finally, our findings suggest that AI needs to focus on the legal and ethical
dimensions of its involvement in human economic activities. We, therefore, call on
policymakers to pay attention to these factors on the path to deepening the role of
AI. For example, the safety risks of AI technology should not be underestimated.
The security concerns of AI have been mentioned numerous times in the existing
literature, including ethical security, technical security, data security and so on. For
the technical level deficiencies, the government should increase the financial invest-
ment and policy protection in this area to provide a good external environment for
the development of the AI industry. When it comes to data and ethical security, on
the one hand, people must be aware of the privacy nature of data itself, and respect
human privacy by establishing moderate legal provisions to address data security
as well as embody data privacy protection without impeding the development of AI
technology. On the other hand, a professional code of ethics for AI should be devel-
oped. In the process of AI design and development, human ethical guidelines and
humanism are incorporated, and efforts are made to find best practices that make AI
decisions more ethical.

Conclusions and Limitations

In this investigation, the aim is to provide a synthesized review of the extant studies that
specialize in the application of AI technology in the economy and related fields. Answer-
ing this critical issue requires detailed knowledge that overcomes the fragmented feature

13
 Journal of the Knowledge Economy

of scientific debate in this area. As such, we combine advanced bibliometric techniques

with a traditional qualitative literature review to balance the quality and quantity of this
discussion. Specifically, a total of 2211 articles published in the WoS Core Collection
database were collected for bibliometric analysis and literature survey.

Summary

Using the bibliometric tool Bibliometrix, we conducted a performance analysis and sci-
ence mapping analysis of publications to visualize the landscape and evolution of the
AI&ED field and to capture the trajectory of themes over time. The intuitive results
show that articles on AI&ED have only emerged in recent years, especially in the last
three years, and are now the focus of much scholarly interest. In addition, the most rel-
evant publication sources are concentrated in “Sustainability,” “IEEE Access,” “Ener-
gies,” and “Expert Systems with Applications”. In particular, “IEEE Access” has seen
the most significant increase in the number of publications in this field in the last few
years. The most influential paper was published in 2020 by Ozturk et al. (2020) in
“Computers in Biology and Medicine”, entitled “Automated detection of COVID-19
cases using deep neural networks with X-ray images”. As of the time of data collection,
this paper has been cited more than 622 times and may be deemed as an extraordinary
work in the field. In addition, the scholar Li Y has produced the most articles and is the
most active author in the field. The science mapping draws the conceptual, intellectual
and social structure across the AI&ED domain. The distribution of topics in the four
quadrants and the evolution of topics over time provide a clear picture of the current
knowledge structure and orientation of the field. Overall, the extended conversations
on the “big data” and “Internet of Things” are still hot topics at this stage. Prediction-
related research is an enduring and widely discussed topic in the field. As expected,
the agenda for COVID-19 is emerging. More importantly, there is a close international
exchange of scholars from different countries/regions working in this field.
On the other hand, with the support of the bibliographic coupling function embed-
ded in the VOS viewer, we identify five key topic areas that are currently the most
popular under AI&ED research: AI and intelligent decision-making, AI and social
governance, AI and labor and capital, AI and Industry 4.0, and AI and innovation,
which is also an outstanding result of this study. In response to these frontier topics,
we run a systematic review to gain insight into each economic subfield. For the prac-
titioner sphere, this work provides theoretical basis and guidance to those currently
employed in the field, enabling them to quickly seize the unlimited potential of AI
in economic development. Nonetheless, for researchers working in this field, we out-
line the profile of each topic area and the research gaps, which will have an important
enlightening force and stimulating effect on future research in this field.

Limitations and Future Scope for Research

Although the study design of this paper ensures the relevance and reliability of the
final results, the generalizability of these results is still subject to certain limitations.

13
Journal of the Knowledge Economy

First and foremost, for the determination of the data sources, we followed the inter-
nationally generally observed rule of access based on the WoS core collection plat-
form. Although the quality of the literature was ensured, a small amount of valu-
able literature was still hidden in other databases, which to some extent makes the
integrity of the sample questionable. Therefore, expanding reliable data collection
channels in future research is a feasible way to improve our study. Secondly, out of
research needs, we only considered most of the literature in the bibliographic cou-
pling network mapping instead of all the literature, which may cause some bias in
the final clustering results. To get a broader picture of the research clusters in this
field, we encourage future researchers to consider more literature information to
obtain more general and delicate insights. Finally, while the utilization of biblio-
metric techniques in the paper reveals its advantages of comprehensiveness, it also
exhibits its shortcomings of not being able to take into account many details. For the
time being, we can only rely on the future improvement of the discipline to remedy
this deficiency. Notwithstanding these limitations, this work offers valuable insights
for the future boom in the AI&ED field.

Author Contribution Yong Qin, Zeshui Xu, Xinxin Wang, and Marinko Škare conceived the study and
were responsible for the data collection, design, and development of the data analysis as well as for data
interpretation. Yong Qin, Zeshui Xu, and Xinxin Wang wrote the first draft of the article.

Funding The work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 72071135),
the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (YJ202063, SXYPY202146), and China
Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 2021M692259).

Declarations
Conflict of Interest The authors declare no competing interests.

References
Aghion, P., Jones, B. F., & Jones, C. I. (2018). Artificial intelligence and economic growth. In The eco-
nomics of artificial intelligence: An agenda (pp. 237–282). University of Chicago Press.
Aghion, P., Antonin, C., & Bunel, S. (2019). Artificial intelligence, growth and employment: The role of
policy. Economie et Statistique, 510(1), 149–164.
Alami, H., Rivard, L., Lehoux, P., Hoffman, S. J., Cadeddu, S. B. M., Savoldelli, M., & Fortin, J.-P.
(2020). Artificial intelligence in health care: Laying the Foundation for Responsible, sustainable,
and inclusive innovation in low- and middle-income countries. Globalization and Health, 16(1),
52.
Albayrak, A., Duran, F., & Bayir, R. (2021). Development and evaluation of a web-based intelligent deci-
sion support system for migratory beekeepers in Turkey to follow nectar resources. Journal of Api-
cultural Research, 60(3), 396–404.
Allam, Z., & Dhunny, Z. A. (2019). On big data, artificial intelligence and smart cities. Cities, 89, 80–91.
Allam, Z., & Jones, D. S. (2020). On the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak and the smart city network:
Universal data sharing standards coupled with artificial intelligence (AI) to benefit urban health
monitoring and management. Healthcare, 8(1), 46.
Allam, Z., & Newman, P. (2018). Redefining the smart city: Culture, metabolism and governance. Smart
Cities, 1, 4.
Ante, L., Steinmetz, F., & Fiedler, I. (2021). Blockchain and energy: A bibliometric analysis and review.
Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 137, 110597.

13
 Journal of the Knowledge Economy

Anton, E., Oesterreich, T. D., Schuir, J., Protz, L., & Teuteberg, F. (2021). A business model taxonomy
for start-ups in the electric power industry - The electrifying effect of artificial intelligence onbusi-
ness model innovation. International Journal of Innovation and Technology Management, 18(03).
https://​doi.​org/​10.​1142/​s0219​87702​15000​48
Arabameri, A., Saha, S., Roy, J., Tiefenbacher, J. P., Cerda, A., Biggs, T., & Collins, A. L. (2020). A
novel ensemble computational intelligence approach for the spatial prediction of land subsidence
susceptibility. Science of the Total Environment, 726, 138595.
Ardakani, F. J., & Ardehali, M. M. (2014). Long-term electrical energy consumption forecasting for
developing and developed economies based on different optimized models and historical data
types. Energy, 65, 452–461.
Aria, M., & Cuccurullo, C. (2017). Bibliometrix: An R-tool for comprehensive science mapping analysis.
Journal of Informetrics, 11(4), 959–975.
Autor, D. H. (2015). Why are there still so many jobs? The history and future of workplace automation.
Journal of Economic Perspectives, 29(3), 3–30.
Azizi, A. (2020). Applications of artificial intelligence techniques to enhance sustainability of Industry
4.0: Design of an artificial neural network model as dynamic behavior optimizer of robotic arms.
Complexity, 2020, 8564140.
Bahrammirzaee, A., Ghatari, A., Ahmadi, P., & Madani, K. (2011). Hybrid credit ranking intelligent sys-
tem using expert system and artificial neural networks. Applied Intelligence, 34, 28–46.
Bécue, A., Praça, I., & Gama, J. (2021). Artificial intelligence, cyber-threats and Industry 4.0: challenges
and opportunities. Artificial Intelligence Review, 54(5), 3849–3886.
Binner, J. M., Gazely, A. M., Chen, S.-H., & Chie, B.-T. (2004). Financial innovation and divisia money
in Taiwan: Comparative evidence from neural network and vector error-correction forecasting
models. Contemporary Economic Policy, 22(2), 213–224.
Bourne, C. (2019). AI cheerleaders: Public relations, neoliberalism and artificial intelligence. Public
Relations Inquiry, 8(2), 109–125.
Bretas, V., & Alon, I. (2021). Franchising research on emerging markets: Bibliometric and content analy-
ses. Journal of Business Research, 133, 51–65.
Buhmann, A., & Fieseler, C. (2021). Towards a deliberative framework for responsible innovation in arti-
ficial intelligence. Technology in Society, 64, 101475.
Carayannis, E. G., Christodoulou, K., Christodoulou, P., Chatzichristofis, S. A., & Zinonos, Z. (2022).
Known unknowns in an era of technological and viral disruptions-implications for theory, policy,
and practice. Journal of the Knowledge Economy, 13(1), 587–610.
Cath, C. (2018). Governing artificial intelligence: Ethical, legal and technical opportunities and chal-
lenges. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A Mathematical Physical and Engineering
Sciences, 376, 20180080.
Cen, Z., & Wang, J. (2019). Crude oil price prediction model with long short term memory deep learning
based on prior knowledge data transfer. Energy, 169, 160–171.
Chattopadhyay, P. B., & Rangarajan, R. (2014). Application of ANN in sketching spatial nonlinearity of
unconfined aquifer in agricultural basin. Agricultural Water Management, 133, 81–91.
Chen, Z. S. (2022). Artificial Intelligence-virtual trainer: Innovative didactics aimed at personalized train-
ing needs. Journal of the Knowledge Economy, 19. https://​doi.​org/​10.​1007/​s13132-​022-​00985-0
Chen, H.-J., Huang, S.-Y., & Kuo, C.-L. (2009). Using the artificial neural network to predict fraud litiga-
tion: Some empirical evidence from emerging markets. Expert Systems with Applications, 36(2,
Part 1), 1478–1484.
Chou, J-S., & Pham, A-D. (2017). Nature-inspired metaheuristic optimization in least squares support
vector regression for obtaining bridge scour information. Information Sciences, 399, 64–80.
Cobo, M. J., López-Herrera, A. G., Herrera-Viedma, E., & Herrera, F. (2011). An approach for detecting,
quantifying, and visualizing the evolution of a research field: A practical application to the Fuzzy
Sets Theory field. Journal of Informetrics, 5(1), 146–166.
Cockburn, I. M., Henderson, R., & Stern, S. J. N. C. (2018). The impact of artificial intelligence on inno-
vation: An exploratory analysis. NBER Chapters.
Coglianese, C., & Lehr, D. (2017). Regulating by robot: Administrative decision making in the Machine-
learning era. Georgetown Law Journal, 105, 1147–1223.
Davenport, T. H., & Ronanki, R. (2018). Artificial intelligence for the real world. Harvard Business
Review, 96(1), 108–116.
de Saille, S. (2015). Innovating innovation policy: The emergence of ‘Responsible Research and Innova-
tion.’ Journal of Responsible Innovation, 2, 152–168.

13
Journal of the Knowledge Economy

Determann, L. (2018). No one owns data. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://​doi.​org/​10.​2139/​ssrn.​31239​57

Donthu, N., Kumar, S., Mukherjee, D., Pandey, N., & Lim, W. M. (2021). How to conduct a bibliometric
analysis: An overview and guidelines. Journal of Business Research, 133, 285–296.
Dopico, M., Gomez, A., Fuente, D., García, N., Rosillo, R., & Puche Regaliza, J. (2016). A Vision of
Industry 4.0 from an Artificial Intelligence. Conference: The 2016 World Congress in Computer
Science, Computer Engineering & Applied Computing (WORLDCOMP 2016) - International
Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IC-AI 2016). At: Las Vegas, EEUU.
Dwivedi, Y. K., Hughes, D. L., Coombs, C., Constantiou, I., Duan, Y., Edwards, J. S., & Upadhyay,
N. (2020). Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on information management research and practice:
Transforming education, work and life. International Journal of Information Management, 55,
102211.
Forliano, C., De Bernardi, P., & Yahiaoui, D. (2021). Entrepreneurial universities: A bibliometric analy-
sis within the business and management domains. Technological Forecasting and Social Change,
165, 120522.
Frank, M., Autor, D., Bessen, J., Brynjolfsson, E., Cebrian, M., Deming, D., & Rahwan, I. (2019).
Toward understanding the impact of artificial intelligence on labor. Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 116, 6531–6539.
Frey, C. B., & Osborne, M. A. (2017). The future of employment: How susceptible are jobs to computeri-
sation? Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 114, 254–280.
Garfield, E. (1979). Is citation analysis a legitimate evaluation tool? Scientometrics, 1(4), 359–375.
Gasteiger, E., & Prettner, K. (2017). On the possibility of automation-induced stagnation. Hohenheim
Discussion Papers in Business, Economics and Social Sciences, University of Hohenheim, Faculty
of Business, Economics and Social Sciences.
Gaur, A., & Kumar, M. (2018). A systematic approach to conducting review studies: An assessment of
content analysis in 25years of IB research. Journal of World Business, 53(2), 280–289.
Goertzel, B., Goertzel, T., & Goertzel, Z. (2017). The global brain and the emerging economy of abun-
dance: Mutualism, open collaboration, exchange networks and the automated commons. Techno-
logical Forecasting and Social Change, 114, 65–73.
Gomes, M. G., da Silva, V. H. C., Pinto, L. F. R., Centoamore, P., Digiesi, S., Facchini, F., & Neto, GCd.
O. (2020). Economic, environmental and social gains of the implementation of artificial intelli-
gence at dam operations toward Industry 4.0 principles. Sustainability, 12(9), 3604.
Haefner, N., Wincent, J., Parida, V., & Gassmann, O. (2021). Artificial intelligence and innovation
management: A review, framework, and research agenda. Technological Forecasting and Social
Change, 162, 120392.
He, S. W., Song, R., & Chaudhry, S. S. (2014). Service-oriented intelligent group decision support sys-
tem: Application in transportation management. Information Systems Frontiers, 16(5), 939–951.
Hernández-Callejo, L., Baladrón, C., Aguiar, J., Carro, B., Sanchez, A., & Lloret, J. (2013). Short-term
load forecasting for microgrids based on artificial neural networks. Energies, 2013. https://​doi.​org/​
10.​3390/​en603​1385
Heylighen, F. (2017). Towards an intelligent network for matching offer and demand: From the sharing
economy to the global brain. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 114, 74–85.
Hildebrandt, M. (2018). Law as computation in the era of artificial legal intelligence: Speaking law to the
power of statistics. University of Toronto Law Journal, 68, 12–35.
Hu, L., Miao, Y., Wu, G., Hassan, M., & Humar, I. (2018). iRobot-Factory: An intelligent robot factory
based on cognitive manufacturing and edge computing. Future Generation Computer Systems, 90.
https://​doi.​org/​10.​1016/j.​future.​2018.​08.​006
Huang, M.-H., Rust, R., & Maksimovic, V. (2019). The feeling economy: Managing in the next genera-
tion of artificial intelligence (AI). California Management Review, 61(4), 43–65.
Huin, S. F., Luong, L. H. S., & Abhary, K. (2003). Knowledge-based tool for planning of enterprise
resources in ASEAN SMEs. Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing, 19, 409–414.
Hutchinson, P. (2021). Reinventing innovation management: The impact of self-innovating artificial intel-
ligence. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, 68(2), 628–639.
Huynh, T. L. D., Hille, E., & Nasir, M. A. (2020). Diversification in the age of the 4th industrial revolu-
tion: The role of artificial intelligence, green bonds and cryptocurrencies. Technological Forecast-
ing and Social Change, 159, 120188.
Iandolo, F., Loia, F., Fulco, I., Nespoli, C., & Caputo, F. (2021). Combining big data and Artificial Intel-
ligence for managing collective knowledge in unpredictable environment-insights from the Chinese
case in facing COVID-19. Journal of the Knowledge Economy, 12(4), 1982–1996.

13
 Journal of the Knowledge Economy

Jakšič, M., & Marinc, M. (2019). Relationship banking and information technology: The role of artificial
intelligence and fintech. Risk Management, 21, 1–18.
Ju, K., Su, B., Zhou, D., & Zhang, Y. (2016). An incentive-oriented early warning system for predicting
the co-movements between oil price shocks and macroeconomy. Applied Energy, 163, 452–463.
Kak, A. (2018). The emergence of the personal data protection bill, 2018: A critique. Economic and
Political Weekly, 53, 12–16.
Kakatkar, C., Bilgram, V., & Füller, J. (2020). Innovation analytics: Leveraging artificial intelligence in
the innovation process. Business Horizons, 63(2), 171–181.
Kıran, M. S., Özceylan, E., Gündüz, M., & Paksoy, T. (2012). Swarm intelligence approaches to estimate
electricity energy demand in Turkey. Knowledge-Based Systems, 36, 93–103.
Lam-Gordillo, O., Baring, R., & Dittmann, S. (2020). Ecosystem functioning and functional approaches
on marine macrobenthic fauna: A research synthesis towards a global consensus. Ecological Indi-
cators, 115, 106379.
Lee, C., & Lim, C. (2021). From technological development to social advance: A review of Industry 4.0
through machine learning. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 167, 120653.
Li, B., Hou, B., Yu, W., Lu, X., & Yang, C. (2017). Applications of artificial intelligence in intelligent
manufacturing: A review. Frontiers of Information Technology & Electronic Engineering, 18(1),
86–96.
Li, J., Wang, R., Wang, J., & Li, Y. (2018). Analysis and forecasting of the oil consumption in China
based on combination models optimized by artificial intelligence algorithms. Energy, 144,
243–264.
Liu, J., Chang, H., Forrest, J.Y.-L., & Yang, B. (2020). Influence of artificial intelligence on technological
innovation: Evidence from the panel data of china’s manufacturing sectors. Technological Fore-
casting and Social Change, 158, 120142.
Liu, L., Huang, J., & Yu, S. (2016). Prediction of primary energy demand in China based on AGAEDE
optimal model. Chinese Journal of Population Resources and Environment, 14(1), 16–29.
Liu, Y., Ma, X., Shu, L., Hancke, G. P., & Abu-Mahfouz, A. M. (2021). From Industry 4.0 to Agriculture
4.0: Current status, enabling technologies, and research challenges. IEEE Transactions on Indus-
trial Informatics, 17(6), 4322–4334.
Lu, H., Li, Y., Chen, M., Kim, H., & Serikawa, S. (2018). Brain intelligence: Go beyond artificial intel-
ligence. Mobile Networks and Applications, 23(2), 368–375.
Luo, Y., Xiao, Y., Cheng, L., Peng, G., & Yao, D. (2021). Deep learning-based anomaly detection in
cyber-physical systems: Progress and opportunities. ACM Computing Surveys, 54, 1–36.
Makridakis, S. (2017). The forthcoming Artificial Intelligence (AI) revolution: Its impact on society and
firms. Futures, 90, 46–60.
Mania, K. (2022). Legal technology: Assessment of the legal tech industry’s potential. Journal of the
Knowledge Economy, 25. https://​doi.​org/​10.​1007/​s13132-​022-​00924-z
McClure, P. K. (2017). “You’re fired”, says the robot: The rise of automation in the workplace, techno-
phobes, and fears of unemployment. Social Science Computer Review, 36(2), 139–156.
Mehmood, R., Alam, F., Albogami, N. N., Katib, I., Albeshri, A., & Altowaijri, S. M. (2017). UTiLearn:
A personalised ubiquitous teaching and learning system for smart societies. IEEE Access, 5,
2615–2635.
Mhlanga, D. (2020). Industry 4.0 in finance: The impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on digital financial
inclusion. International Journal of Financial Studies, 8(3), 45.
Moll, J., & Yigitbasioglu, O. (2019). The role of internet-related technologies in shaping the work of
accountants: New directions for accounting research. The British Accounting Review, 51(6),
100833.
Naimi-Sadigh, A., Asgari, T., & Rabiei, M. (2021). Digital transformation in the value chain dis-
ruption of banking services. Journal of the Knowledge Economy, 31. https://​doi.​org/​10.​1007/​
s13132-​021-​00759-0
Nasr, M. M., Anwar, S., Al-Samhan, A. M., Ghaleb, M., & Dabwan, A. (2020). Milling of graphene rein-
forced Ti6Al4V nanocomposites: An artificial intelligence based Industry 4.0 approach. Materials,
13(24), 5707.
Nemitz, P. (2018). Constitutional democracy and technology in the age of artificial intelligence. Philo-
sophical Transactions of the Royal Society A Mathematical Physical and Engineering Sciences,
376(2133), 20180089.
Niu, Y. F. (2018). The application of artificial intelligence and intelligent decision in men volleyball’s
lineup tactics. Lecture Notes in Real-Time Intelligent Systems, 613, 263–270.

13
Journal of the Knowledge Economy

Ozturk, T., Talo, M., Yildirim, E. A., Baloglu, U. B., Yildirim, O., & Rajendra Acharya, U. (2020).
Automated detection of COVID-19 cases using deep neural networks with X-ray images. Com-
puters in Biology and Medicine, 121, 103792.
Peres, R. S., Jia, X., Lee, J., Sun, K., Colombo, A. W., & Barata, J. (2020). Industrial artificial
intelligence in Industry 4.0 - Systematic review, challenges and outlook. IEEE Access, 8,
220121–220139.
Pham-Duc, B., Tran, T., Le, H.-T.-T., Nguyen, N.-T., Cao, H.-T., & Nguyen, T.-T. (2021) Research on
Industry 4.0 and on key related technologies in Vietnam: A bibliometric analysis using Scopus.
Learned Publishing. https://​doi.​org/​10.​1002/​leap.​1381
Pinter, J., Fels, M., Lycon, D. S., Meeuwig, J. W., & Meeuwig, D. J. (1995). An intelligent decision
support system for assisting industrial wastewater management. Annals of Operations Research,
58, 455–477.
Qin, Y., Wang, X. X., Xu, Z. S., & Škare, M. (2021). The impact of poverty cycles on economic
research: Evidence from econometric analysis. Economic Research-Ekonomska Istraživanja,
34(1), 152–171.
Qin, Y., Xu, Z. S., Wang, X. X., & Škare, M. (2020). Are family firms in the eyes of economic
policy? International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal. https://​doi.​org/​10.​1007/​
s11365-​020-​00699-2
Qin, Y., Xu, Z. S., Wang, X. X., & Škare, M. (2022). Green energy adoption and its determinants: A
bibliometric analysis. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 153, 111780.
Rodriguez, G. G., Gonzalez-Cava, J. M., & Perez, J. A. M. (2020). An intelligent decision support
system for production planning based on machine learning. Journal of Intelligent Manufactur-
ing, 31(5), 1257–1273.
Rust, R. T. (2020). The future of marketing. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 37(1),
15–26.
Ryman-Tubb, N. F., Krause, P., & Garn, W. (2018). How Artificial Intelligence and machine learning
research impacts payment card fraud detection: A survey and industry benchmark. Engineering
Applications of Artificial Intelligence, 76, 130–157.
Samid, G. (2021). Artificial intelligence assisted innovation. https://​doi.​org/​10.​5772/​intec​hopen.​96112
Sanz, E., Blesa, J., & Puig, V. (2021). BiDrac Industry 4.0 framework: Application to an Automotive
Paint Shop Process. Control Engineering Practice, 109, 104757.
Shakir, M., Mehmood, F., Bibi, Z., & Anjum, M. (2019). Innovation and artificial intelligence. https://​
doi.​org/​10.​1007/​978-3-​030-​20454-9_​31
Sharabov, M., & Tsochev, G. (2020). The use of artificial intelligence in Industry 4.0. Problems of
Engineering Cybernetics and Robotics, 73. https://​doi.​org/​10.​7546/​PECR.​73.​20.​02
Skiba, M., Mrówczyńska, M., & Bazan-Krzywoszańska, A. (2017). Modeling the economic depend-
ence between town development policy and increasing energy effectiveness with neural net-
works. Case study: The town of Zielona Góra. Applied Energy, 188, 356–366.
Skrop, A. (2018). Industry 4.0 - Challenges in industrial artificial intelligence. Conference: II. Inter-
national Scientific Conference on Tourism and Security. At: Hungary.
Soh, Y. W., Koo, C. H., Huang, Y. F., & Fung, K. F. (2018). Application of artificial intelligence mod-
els for the prediction of standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI) at Langat
River Basin, Malaysia. Computers and Electronics in Agriculture, 144, 164–173.
Su, H.-N., & Lee, P.-C. (2010). Mapping knowledge structure by keyword co-occurrence: A first look
at journal papers in Technology Foresight. Scientometrics, 85(1), 65–79.
Syam, N., & Sharma, A. (2018). Waiting for a sales renaissance in the fourth industrial revolution:
Machine learning and artificial intelligence in sales research and practice. Industrial Marketing
Management, 69, 135–146.
Tang, X., Li, X., Ding, Y., Song, M., & Bu, Y. (2020). The pace of artificial intelligence innovations:
Speed, talent, and trial-and-error. Journal of Informetrics, 14(4), 101094.
Tariq, S., Hu, Z., & Zayed, T. (2021). Micro-electromechanical systems-based technologies for leak
detection and localization in water supply networks: A bibliometric and systematic review.
Journal of Cleaner Production, 289, 125751.
Trifan, B., & Buzatu, A. (2020). Sustainable business enhanced through digital transformation and
artificial intelligence in the context of Industry 4.0. Conference: BASIQ. At: Italy.
Tsiknakis, N., Trivizakis, E., Vassalou, E., Papadakis, G., Spandidos, D., Tsatsakis, A., & Marias, K.
(2020). Interpretable artificial intelligence framework for COVID‑19 screening on chest X‑rays.
Experimental and Therapeutic Medicine, 20. https://​doi.​org/​10.​3892/​etm.​2020.​8797

13
 Journal of the Knowledge Economy

Turner Lee, N. (2018). Detecting racial bias in algorithms and machine learning. Journal of Information,
Communication and Ethics in Society, 16(3), 252–260.
Uzlu, E., Kankal, M., Akpınar, A., & Dede, T. (2014). Estimates of energy consumption in Turkey using
neural networks with the teaching–learning-based optimization algorithm. Energy, 75, 295–303.
Vallaster, C., Kraus, S., MerigóLindahl, J. M., & Nielsen, A. (2019). Ethics and entrepreneurship: A bib-
liometric study and literature review. Journal of Business Research, 99, 226–237.
von Joerg, G., & Carlos, J. (2022). Design framework for the implementation of AI-based (service) busi-
ness models for small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises. Journal of the Knowledge
Economy, 19. https://​doi.​org/​10.​1007/​s13132-​022-​01003-z
van Eck, N. J., & Waltman, L. (2010). Software survey: VOSviewer, a computer program for bibliometric
mapping. Scientometrics, 84(2), 523–538.
van Oorschot, J. A. W. H., Hofman, E., & Halman, J. I. M. (2018). A bibliometric review of the innova-
tion adoption literature. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 134, 1–21.
Verganti, R., Vendraminelli, L., & Iansiti, M. (2020). Innovation and design in the age of artificial intel-
ligence. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 37(3), 212–227.
Vermeulen, B., Kesselhut, J., Pyka, A., & Saviotti, P. P. (2018). The impact of automation on employ-
ment: Just the usual structural Change? Sustainability, 10(5), 1661.
Vivarelli, M. (2014). Innovation, employment and skills in advanced and developing countries: A survey
of economic literature. Journal of Economic Issues, 48(1), 123–154.
Vogt, J. (2021). Where is the human got to go? Artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data, digitali-
sation, and human-robot interaction in Industry 4.0 and 5.0. AI & Society. https://​doi.​org/​10.​1007/​
s00146-​020-​01123-7
Vyshnevskyi, O., Liashenko, V., & Amosha, O. (2019). The impact of Industry 4.0 and AI on economic
growth. Scientific Papers of Silesian University of Technology Organization and Management
Series, 9, 391–400.
Wang, C., Lim, M. K., Zhao, L., Tseng, M.-L., Chien, C.-F., & Lev, B. (2020a). The evolution of Omega-
The International Journal of Management Science over the past 40 years: A bibliometric overview.
Omega, 93, 102098.
Wang, L., Luo, G.-L., Sari, A., & Shao, X.-F. (2020b). What nurtures fourth industrial revolution? An
investigation of economic and social determinants of technological innovation in advanced econo-
mies. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 161, 120305.
Wang, L., Zhang, H.-C., & Wang, Q. (2019). On the concepts of artificial intelligence and innova-
tive design in product design. IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering, 573,
012095.
Wang, X. X., Chang, Y. R., Xu, Z. S., Wang, Z. D., & Kadirkamanathan, V. (2021a). 50 Years of inter-
national journal of systems science: A review of the past and trends for the future. International
Journal of Systems Science, 52(8), 1515–1538.
Wang, X. X., Xu, Z. S., & Škare, M. (2020c). A bibliometric analysis of Economic Research-Ekonomska
Istraživanja (2007–2019). Economic Research-Ekonomska Istraživanja, 33(1), 865–886.
Wang, X. X., Xu, Z. S., Su, S.-F., & Zhou, W. (2021b). A comprehensive bibliometric analysis of uncer-
tain group decision making from 1980 to 2019. Information Sciences, 547, 328–353.
Weng, B., Martinez, W., Tsai, Y.-T., Li, C., Lu, L., Barth, J. R., & Megahed, F. M. (2018). Macroe-
conomic indicators alone can predict the monthly closing price of major U.S. indices: Insights
from artificial intelligence, time-series analysis and hybrid models. Applied Soft Computing, 71,
685–697.
Williams, P. (2019). Does competency-based education with blockchain signal a new mission for univer-
sities? Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 41(1), 104–117.
Wolff, J. G. (2014). Big data and the SP theory of intelligence. IEEE Access, 2, 301–315.
Xue, L., Zhu, Y. P., & Xue, Y. (2013). RAEDSS: An integrated decision support system for regional agri-
cultural economy in China. Mathematical and Computer Modelling, 58(3–4), 480–488.
Yamashiro, S. (1986). Online secure-economy preventive control of power systems by pattern recogni-
tion. IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, 1(3), 214–219.
Yong, B., Xu, Z. J., Wang, X., Cheng, L. B., Li, X., Wu, X., & Zhou, Q. G. (2018). IoT-based intelligent
fitness system. Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, 118, 14–21.

13
Journal of the Knowledge Economy

Zhang, Y., Zhang, M., Li, J., Liu, G., Yang, M. M., & Liu, S. (2021). A bibliometric review of a dec-
ade of research: Big data in business research – Setting a research agenda. Journal of Business
Research, 131, 374–390.
Zheng, X., Le, Y., Chan, A. P. C., Hu, Y., & Li, Y. (2016). Review of the application of social network
analysis (SNA) in construction project management research. International Journal of Project
Management, 34(7), 1214–1225.

Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps
and institutional affiliations.

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under
a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted
manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and
applicable law.

13