The development of Kondratieff’s theory of long waves: the place of the AI economy humanization in the ‘competencies-innovations-markets’ model

Abstract The motivation to conduct this study is related to the uncertainty of the impact of the AI economy on the economic cycle and the need to unlock the potential of Industry 4.0 in stabilizing the global economic system amid a series of crises. The article discusses the fundamental issues of the emergence of a new theory related to the evolution of Kondratieff waves in the context of modern drivers of long-term economic development (MANBRIC technologies), taking into account the acceleration of the development of innovations and competencies. The spiraling dynamics of the co-development of competencies and the expansion of new markets are shown, which makes it possible to transform the decline phase of the Kondratieff wave into a similar linear process of maintaining economic growth rates close to the existing ones. As a result, based on the authors’ model “competencies-innovations-markets”, it is proved that subject to humanization, the AI economy allows the reduction of the cyclical nature of the world economic system. The main idea of the article is to smooth out Kondratieff’s long waves due to the humanization of the AI economy.