Google's James Manyika: 'The Productivity Gains From AI Are Not Guaranteed'

Google executive James Manyika has warned that AI's impact on productivity is not guaranteed [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled], despite predictions of trillion-dollar economic potential. From the report: 'Right now, everyone from my old colleagues at McKinsey Global Institute to Goldman Sachs are putting out these extraordinary economic potential numbers -- in the trillions -- [but] it's going to take a whole bunch of actions, innovations, investments, even enabling policy...The productivity gains are not guaranteed. They're going to take a lot of work.' In 1987 economist Robert Solow remarked that the computer age was visible everywhere except in the productivity statistics. 'We could have a version of that -- where we see this technology everywhere, on our phones, in all these chatbots, but it's done nothing to transform the economy in that real fundamental way.'

The use of generative AI to draft software code is not enough. 'In the US, the tech sector is about 4 per cent of the labour force. Even if the entire tech sector adopted it 100 per cent, it doesn't matter from a labour productivity standpoint.' Instead the answer lies with 'very large sectors' such as healthcare and retail. Former British prime minister Sir Tony Blair has said that people 'will have an AI nurse, probably an AI doctor, just as you'll have an AI tutor.' Manyika is less dramatic: 'In most of those cases, those professions will be assisted by AI. I don't think any of those occupations are going to be replaced by AI, not in any conceivable future.'

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