Will artificial intelligence light a fire under the U.S. economy in the coming years? That's been a big question in the field of economics, and now Anthropic — the company behind the popular Claude AI assistant — is taking a stab at helping people find their own answers. The company has created an interactive tool that lets users test their assumptions about how productive — or disruptive — the AI boom might be.

In one scenario, artificial intelligence provides a gentle boost to the economy, lifting growth rates with little effect on workers. At the other extreme, GDP soars, but so does unemployment, with nearly 14% of workers losing their jobs to AI and less than half of them finding new ones.

The different outcomes depend on how capable and flexible the technology is, how quickly it's adopted, whether it supports or replaces workers, and whether displaced workers find new work to do.

"In the modest change scenario, AI is a small technology. The economy continues on a 'normal' path with AI making changes around the margins," Anthropic experts write in an accompanying blog post. "In the extreme scenario, AI transforms the economy. The macroeconomic consequences go well beyond any event in history, both in terms of magnitudes and in terms of the speed at which change happens."

Authors of the Anthropic study do not offer a prediction of which outcome is more likely. In general, they say, AI experts tend to project a more rapid spread of the technology while economists tend to be more cautious.

Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark is somewhere in the middle.

"I think the technology will keep developing at a very, very fast and sustained rate but diffusion of the technology will likely be more challenging than people think," Clark told NPR. "So it will get really, really good. But it will make its way into the economy more slowly."

AI's impact on economy is uncertain

A survey by Anthropic of nearly 11,000 people found that the public's expectations of AI are also mixed. The average survey respondent projects a significant boost in productivity and economic growth but also a substantial disruption to workers in AI-sensitive fields.

A major determinant of AI's impact will be how quickly it spreads through the economy.

"If the AI can do amazing things but nobody uses it, then it's not going to have an economic impact," says Anton Korinek, Anthropic's head of transformative AI economic studies.

While rapid adoption of the technology could be more disruptive, it could also produce much faster economic growth. In Anthropic's extreme case, GDP grows at more than seven times its current pace. That could produce a lot of additional tax revenue to support workers who are hurt by AI.

"If you end up with this level of GDP growth, you have moves available to you as a [government] policymaker that are unimaginable today," Clark says. "Policymakers should get ready to spend."