Does AI 'fix' productivity?

There is a lot of chatter about #productivity , both from government and in private enterprise, with the general consensus that improvements are needed.

After some AI assisted research - thank you #bingchat - including lots of follow up questions and the odd click on a cited reference, I feel sufficiently informed to conclude that, to my surprise, productivity growth is slowing. This is very true for Australia and a similar pattern can be seen globally.

Disclaimer: I'm not an economics professor, nor want to be, and am sure this debate could open up many cans of worms about the economy, policy, measurements, data quality, philosophy etc....

Technology over the past four decades

Looking back...

• The Personal Computer enabled each and every person to work digitally.
• The Internet enabled mass immediate communication.
• The smartphone allowed both concepts to be carried in our pockets and used anywhere.
• And the cloud further increased our access to and use of computing resources.

All these amazing inventions and tools.

Yet productivity, for many reasons, hasn't boomed!

Given we are at the doorstep of the AI era how do we maximize this opportunity?

AI is not the silver bullet

In the current macro-economic environment, the primary focus needs to be on improving productivity.

Gains in productivity can reduce costs, increase revenue or both. It also has the added benefit of better positioning a business for when economic conditions improve.

And there has never been a better and more enabled time to increase productivity.

AI's role in productivity

AI will play a key role in increasing productivity, but we need to be strategic about where and how it is used.

It's tempting to think "AI first" and in some cases an AI solution can be the core of a strategic idea.

But our intentions must centre around productivity.

Productivity gains

Knowing what AI can do - even in these early stages - we should aim for high-benefit outcomes in areas such as:

• Customer Experience - addressing the custom needs easily (including self-service) with little or no human intervention and to the satisfaction of customers.
• Marketing & Sales - better targeting with higher quality content, lowering acquisition costs and freeing up staff to work on higher value prospects.
• Innovation - with access to more information and better guidance, we can pursue initiatives that are more likely to result in higher benefits.
• Decisions - having better data and more effective ways to analyse it, decision processes can be enhanced (albeit ensuring we respect human experience and 'gut feel' as well) .
• Automation - in abundance across all domains, leading to better utilization of high-quality resources - such as skilled humans who will also be more satisfied and challenged - with lower errors and better detection and monitoring of processes.

In conclusion, productivity is a crucial goal for any business, and AI can offer many opportunities to achieve it, but we need to be strategic and mindful of how we use it to create value for ourselves and our customers.

AI was used for research and to generate the banner image. This article was written by a real human except for the concluding paragraph.