This strand studies how generative AI changes employment, household income, investment and energy demand, and which policies would keep that transition stable. The Expansion Horizon (2026), which I lead, argues that generative AI marks the irruption of a sixth technological revolution in Carlota Perez's sense, and that economic forecasts calibrated on the fifth revolution underestimate a technology whose capabilities expand by recombination.
The work on labour uses system dynamics models developed with colleagues at the Mental Wealth Initiative. The Scientific Reports paper (2025) uses Australian data to show that beyond a threshold in the ratio of AI capital to labour, even high rates of new job creation cannot prevent falls in consumption, and that a moderate rise in that ratio could double labour underutilisation by mid-2050. The Bulletin of the World Health Organization paper (2025) traces how that recessionary pressure would affect population health through unemployment and economic insecurity. AI and the destruction of capital (2026) and a commentary in the Australian Financial Review (2026) take up the financial side of the same transition.
Two further lines concern energy and industry. With Jo-An Occhipinti and colleagues I have argued that Australia should treat AI data centres as active partners in the electricity grid and align their expansion with renewable generation, so that growth in AI supports energy affordability and grid stability (SSRN preprint, 2025; Innovation Australia, 2025). For industry, I wrote a briefing note for National Australia Bank on managing the generative AI transition in banking (2025).