Reconstructing Comparative Advantage in International Trade in Services in the Era of Generative Artificial Intelligence: A Trade-in-Tasks Perspective

Abstract

Generative artificial intelligence is changing international trade in services through the production of services itself. Unlike earlier digital technologies, which mainly reduced the costs of cross-border delivery and communication, generative artificial intelligence can intervene directly in tasks such as text production, coding, customer service, and professional knowledge processing, thereby changing task costs, the degree of standardization, and the division of labor between humans and machines. Drawing on comparative advantage theory, trade-in-tasks theory, and research on automation, this article develops a task-level analytical framework to examine how substitution, augmentation, and creation affect the tradability of service tasks and the boundary of offshoring. The analysis shows that artificial intelligence does not eliminate comparative advantage but changes the basis on which it is formed. Cost advantages that traditionally depended on wage differentials and general human capital are increasingly shaped jointly by task composition, human-machine complementarity, access to models and computing power, data, and organizational integration capabilities. Competition in services trade is therefore more likely to shift toward productivity adjusted for artificial intelligence. On this basis, the article introduces the concept of artificial intelligence-mediated comparative advantage to describe service-trade advantages jointly shaped by relative task productivity and cross-border tradability under artificial intelligence.