How AI Will Impact Global Productivity Growth

The emergence of generative AI represents a major advancement in artificial intelligence capabilities. Generative AI refers to AI systems that generate new content, such as text, images, audio, and video, at quality levels that match or exceed human outputs.

Its ability to generate content indistinguishable from human-created output and to break down communication barriers between humans and machines reflects a major advancement with potentially large macroeconomic effects.

There are three key changes between Generative AI compared to previous models:

Their generalized rather than specialized use cases, their ability to generate novel, human-like output rather than merely describe or interpret existing information, and their approachable interfaces that both understand and respond with natural language, images, audio, and video

The first two advances expand the set of tasks AI can perform. The third will likely accelerate adoption timelines, much like the migration from command line to graphical user interfaces brought personal computing to the masses.

Generative AI use cases will impact business functions across industries differently:

McKinsey estimates generative AI has the potential to generate $2.6 trillion to $4.4 trillion in value across industries. It is likely to have the biggest impact on knowledge work, particularly activities involving decision-making and collaboration, which previously had low potential for automation.

In summary, generative AI's ability to produce high-quality, human-like content, combined with its intuitive interfaces, can significantly boost productivity and value across many industries. Its impact will be most pronounced on tasks requiring creativity, judgment, and collaboration.