According to global consulting leader McKinsey and Company, Generative AI could add “2.6 trillion to $4.4 trillion annually” to the global economy. That’s almost the “economic equivalent of adding an entire new country the size and productivity of the United Kingdom to the Earth ($3.1 trillion GDP in 2021),” notes VentureBeat. From the report: The $2.6 trillion to $4.4 trillion economic impact figure marks a huge increase over McKinsey’s previous estimates of the AI field’s impact on the economy from 2017, up 15 to 40% from before. This upward revision is due to the incredibly fast embrace and potential use cases of GenAI tools by large and small enterprises. Furthermore, McKinsey finds “current generative AI and other technologies have the potential to automate work activities that absorb 60 to 70% of employees’ time today.” Does this mean massive job loss is inevitable? No, according to Alex Sukharevsky, senior partner and global leader of QuantumBlack, McKinsey’s in-house AI division and report co-author. “You basically could make it significantly faster to perform these jobs and do so much more precisely than they are performed today,” Sukharevsky told VentureBeat. What that translates to is an addition of “0.2 to 3.3 percentage points annually to productivity growth” to the entire global economy, he said.

However, as the report notes, “workers will need support in learning new skills, and some will change occupations. If worker transitions and other risks can be managed, generative AI could contribute substantively to economic growth and support a more sustainable, inclusive world.” Also, the advent of accessible GenAI has pushed up McKinsey’s previous estimates for workplace automation: “Half of today’s work activities could be automated between 2030 and 2060, with a midpoint in 2045, or roughly a decade earlier than in our previous estimates.”

Specifically, McKinsey’s report found that four types of tasks — customer operations, marketing and sales, software engineering and R&D — were likely to account for 75% of the value add of GenAI in particular. “Examples include generative AI’s ability to support interactions with customers, generate creative content for marketing and sales and draft computer code based on natural-language prompts, among many other tasks.” […] Overall, McKinsey views GenAI as a “technology catalyst,” pushing industries further along toward automation journeys, but also freeing up the creative potential of employees. “I do believe that if anything, we are getting into the age of creativity and the age of creator,” Sukharevsky said.

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Source: Slashdot – McKinsey Report Finds Generative AI Could Add Up To .4 Trillion a Year To the Global Economy