“Generative artificial intelligence” will add up to $4.4 trillion in value to the global economy annually, according to a McKinsey Global Institute report, in what is one of the rosier predictions about the economic effects of the rapidly evolving technology.
Generative AI, including chatbots like ChatGPT that can generate text in response to prompts, could potentially boost productivity by saving 60 to 70 percent of employees’ time by automating their work, according to the 68-page report published early Wednesday. . Half of all work will be automated between 2030 and 2060, the report said.
McKinsey had previously predicted that AI would automate half of all work between 2035 and 2075, but the power of generative AI tools — which exploded onto the tech scene late last year — accelerated the company’s forecast.
“Generative AI has the potential to change the anatomy of work and enhance the capabilities of individual workers by automating some of their individual activities,” the report said.
McKinsey’s report is one of the few so far to quantify the long-term impact of generative AI on the economy. The report comes as Silicon Valley is in the throes of a fervor over generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, with technology companies and venture capitalists investing billions of dollars in the technology.
The tools — some of which can also generate images and videos and hold a conversation — have sparked a debate about how they will affect jobs and the global economy. Some experts have predicted that the AI will displace people from their jobs, while others have said the tools could boost individual productivity.
Last week, Goldman Sachs released a report warning that AI could lead to worker disruption and that some companies would benefit more from the technology than others. In April, a Stanford researcher and researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology released a study showing that generative AI could increase the productivity of inexperienced call center operators by 35 percent.
Any conclusions about the effects of the technology may be premature. David Autor, an economics professor at MIT, warned that generative AI “will not be as wonderful as people claim.”
“We are really, really in the early stages,” he added.
For the most part, economic studies of generative AI fail to account for the technology’s other risks, such as spreading misinformation and ultimately escaping the realm of human control.
According to McKinsey’s report, the vast majority of generative AI’s economic value will most likely come from helping employees automate tasks in customer operations, sales, software engineering, and research and development. Generative AI can create “superpowers” for highly skilled workers, says Lareina Yee, a McKinsey partner and author of the report, because the technology can summarize and edit content.
“The most profound change we’re going to see is the change of people, and that requires much more innovation and leadership than technology,” she said.
The report also outlined challenges industry leaders and regulators should address with AI, including concerns that the content generated by the tools could be misleading and inaccurate.
Ms. Yee acknowledged that the report made predictions about the effects of AI, but that “if you could capture even a third” of what the technology’s potential is, “it’s pretty remarkable for the next five to 10 years. “
