The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on the World Economy

"If delivered, this impact would compare well with that of other general-purpose technologies through history," notes McKinsey. "Consider, for instance, that the introduction of steam engines during the 1800s boosted labor productivity by an estimated 0.3 percent a year, the impact from robots during the 1990s around 0.4 percent, and the spread of IT during the 2000s 0.6 percent." The McKinsey report is based on simulation models of the impact of AI at the country, sector, company and worker levels. It looked at their adoption of five broad categories of AI technologies: computer vision; natural language; virtual assistants, robotic process automation, and advanced machine learning. Data sources included survey data from approximately 3,000 firms in 14 different sectors and economic data from a number of organizations including the United Nations, the World Bank and the World Economic Forum.