Will AI Destroy Jobs? - Part II

The McKinsey Global Institute recently published a report in which they estimated the productivity potential of generative AI. The number they came up with is 6.1 to 7.9 trillion USD. Since this number is too large to imagine, let's break it down. The size of the global workforce is roughly 3.2 billion workers. According to Forrester about 1.25 billion of them are "information workers", i.e. they work with a computer or a smartphone. So the productivity potential is between 5,000 and 6,000 USD per information worker, which is the group that is mainly impacted by generative AI.?

I like this analysis because it provides some grounding to the debate about the impact of generative AI on work. The impact is large, but it is mainly on productivity. AI will make us all more productive, significantly so, but also not insanely so. The effect on employment depends on the impact of productivity on employment. And it is one of the seeming paradoxes of economics that rising productivity leads to an increase in employment and not to a decrease. So with generative AI there will be more jobs and not less!

As a society we should fully embrace generative AI as a tool that will make us more productive. In my view the best comparison is with the combination of the internet and the search engine. The latter made all knowledge of mankind available to everyone. Generative AI will make us understand and process this knowledge even better.?