Visions of an AI-infused world can be a little scary. Perhaps our brains will dull as we outsource intellectual struggle to our digital assistants. Perhaps — brace yourself — your jaunty economic analysis will come from a confident large language model, rather than a harried human. I prefer to daydream about a sunnier scenario, in which our new digital tools deliver huge productivity gains. So perusing the latest data and evidence, where are the glimmers of light?
One lies in the excitingly strong headline labour productivity growth in both the UK and US. Admittedly, my threshold for excitement here is quite low, though more importantly there are easier explanations for the uptick than an AI-fuelled boom. In the US, tariff uncertainty could have made companies hesitant about hiring, while in the UK a higher minimum wage may have been clearing out low-paid jobs. Both could raise measured productivity, but not really in the way we want.
More promising signs came from digging into the more granular data. I don’t mean the assortment of corporate anecdotes that have the informational value of parental boasting at the playground. One compilation by Goldman Sachs put the average productivity boost from AI at 32 per cent. And based on the playground chatter, the average child is a chess prodigy, a lover of Swiss chard and a semi-professional trombonist.