During the last twenty years, we have witnessed the deep development of digital
technologies. Artificial intelligence, software and algorithms have started to
impact more and more frequently in our daily lives and most people didn't notice
it. Recently, economists seem to have perceived that this new technological wave
could have some consequences, but which one are they? Will they be positive
or negative? In this paper we try to give a possible answer to these questions
through an agent based computational approach; more specifically we enriched
the large-scale macroeconomics model EURACE with the concept of digital
technologies in order to investigate the effect that their business dynamics have
at a macroeconomic level. Our preliminary results show that this productivity
increase could be a double-edged sword: notwithstanding the development of
the digital technologies sector can create new job opportunities, at the same
time, these products could jeopardize the employment inside the traditional
mass-production system