How will AI affect productivity?
Generative artificial intelligence (genAI) has burst onto the scene, contributing to a bump in stock prices of big tech companies and raising hopes for a transformation of the economy, a new era of faster growth, and, perhaps, rising incomes. At the same time, it has raised concerns about widespread job losses, while some see the new technology as largely hype. In this explainer, we will look at what we know about the prospects of artificial intelligence (AI) for the workforce, businesses, and the overall economy. Could this technology power future growth through improved productivity? Productivity is defined as the ratio of economic output to the inputs required in production. It is a measure of the efficiency of production. The simplest productivity measure is output divided by hours of labor called labor productivity. Labor productivity growth has been slow in recent years, running at about 1.5% per year, compared to over 3% a year in the early 2000s.1 Other inputs to production (es
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