It seems that the management of almost every major company these days revolves around introducing or adopting new AI tools for productive AI. So what impact will these moves have on the economy? McKinsey’s report details this effect.$4.4 trillion annual contribution from artificial intelligence
While it’s hard to say for sure, global consulting leader McKinsey and Company has tried to quantify this trend in a new report: the economic potential of Generative AI. The report reveals that productive AI can contribute “$2.6 trillion to $4.4 trillion annually” to the global economy, which is close to the economic equivalent of adding a new country the size and productivity of the UK to the world.
To create the report, McKinsey analysts examined 850 occupations and 2,100 detailed business activities in 47 countries, representing more than 80 percent of the global workforce. The economic impact figure of $2.6 trillion to $4.4 trillion marks a massive 15 to 40 percent increase over McKinsey’s previous estimates of the impact of the AI space on the economy in 2017. This upward revision builds on record adoption of productive AI tools.Most current jobs can be automated
In addition, McKinsey states in its report that “current productive AI and other technologies have the potential to automate business activities that take up 60 to 70 percent of employee time today.”Does this mean mass job loss is inevitable? Not according to Alex Sukharevsky, senior partner and global leader of QuantumBlack, McKinsey’s in-house artificial intelligence division, and co-author of the report. “Basically, you can do these things significantly faster and with much more precision than they are done today,” Sukharevsky said. This translates into “a 0.2 to 3.3 percentage point annual contribution to productivity growth” for the entire global economy, he said.
McKinsey states that employees need support, training and guidance to avoid workforce loss, and states that by 2045, half of the jobs can be automated. According to McKinsey, the first line of business that artificial intelligence will automate will be white-collar workers. Then, body-intensive (construction, transportation, mining, etc.) jobs will come, thanks to artificial intelligence combined with machines.
New jobs will be created
According to Sukharevsky, “Many new tasks and jobs will be created.” In the short term, “prompt” engineers will come to the fore for LLMs, namely large language models (GPT-4, ChatGPT), but in the longer term, all industries will create new jobs and professions with the influence of artificial intelligence in some way. Existing jobs will become more productive with artificial intelligence.Examples include the ability of generative AI to support interactions with customers, produce creative content for marketing and sales, and prepare computer code based on natural language prompts, among many other tasks. Even more Turkish is this: Everyone will be able to work in the fields of marketing, software and engineering with artificial intelligence. Sounds good, but this will require more vigorous training. The new generation should not have the luxury of being bad at math and creative thinking.
‘Technology catalyst’ for economic growth
In software engineering, McKinsey believes the technology will provide 20 to 45% efficiency gains in software spend by accelerating the process of “creating initial code sketches, code fixes and refactoring, root cause analysis and new system designs.” When it comes to R&D, McKinsey believes productive AI will “help product designers reduce costs by selecting and using materials more efficiently.” It can also optimize designs for production, which can lead to cost reductions in logistics and manufacturing. Therefore, people may decrease quantitatively in these business areas, but their importance will be much greater.Overall, McKinsey sees generative AI as a “technology catalyst” and says it will unlock the creative potential of employees while pushing industries towards automation journeys.
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