My recent white paper (The Most Important Topic in Economics) discussed the interplay between demographics and productivity enhancement in determining future economic growth. Given little or no growth in the working population, we will enjoy satisfactory economic and income growth only if we are able to increase output per hour worked. My paper ended with the optimistic prediction that Artificial Intelligence or AI will contribute to a surge in productivity growth which has been lackluster for the past fifteen years.
I’m excited to report that there is early evidence that AI is indeed having a profound impact. Research conducted by Stanford University and the World Bank and reported by Visual Capitalist focused on eighteen common work tasks finding that the use of AI decreased the time required to complete them by at least 60%. Tasks with the largest gains in efficiency were:
Troubleshooting 76%
Complex Problem Solving 75%
Critical Thinking 74%
Programming 74%
Technology Design 73%
These are mostly technical, highly analytical tasks. However, the study found that even human-centric tasks such as instruction, management of personnel, and time management enjoyed time reductions of 60% or more.
Many people have been very concerned about the possibility that AI will replace jobs. However, this data suggests that human workers empowered by AI can handle jobs much more efficiently. Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, said “You won’t lose your job to AI-you’ll lose your job to somebody who uses AI.”