Bloomberg: Biggest losers of AI boom are knowledge workers, McKinsey says

[1NJParent]

The research examined 63 use cases for generative AI, the type of tools that can generate content such as text or images based on a prompt, across some 850 occupations. Depending on how the technology is adopted and implemented, productivity increases could range between 0.1% and 0.6% over the next 20 years, it found.
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The transformation will pile pressure on the labor force, especially for higher-wage knowledge workers whose activities “were previously considered to be relatively immune from automation,” the report said.
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About 75% of the potential value from applied generative AI will come in four business functions: customer operations, marketing and sales, software engineering, and research and development.

Banks alone could generate an additional $200-$340 billion from increased productivity, the report found, as the new technology improves customer satisfaction, helps decision-making and mitigates fraud through better monitoring. That would equate to a jump in operating profits of somewhere between 9% and 15%.

In product R&D, the technology could deliver a boost to productivity of 10% to 15%, McKinsey said. It cited the example of life sciences and chemical industries, where AI can generate potential molecules more quickly, accelerating the process of developing new drugs and materials. That could add as much as 25% to profits for pharmaceutical companies and medical product firms.

And it’s all developing fast. The firm’s earlier research suggested that 2027 would be the first year when AI technology would be able to match the typical human’s performance in tasks that involve “natural-language understanding.” Now, McKinsey reckons it will happen this year.

Automation adoption will be faster in developed economies, where higher wages will make it feasible sooner, than poorer ones — and will impact white-collar work much more than physical tasks.

The original Bloomberg article is behind paywall. Here’s a free version:

Biggest losers of AI boom are knowledge workers, McKinsey says

[SouthYankie]

If AI can rid us of McKinsey, that will be good enough.

[simba9]

AI’s always been overhyped. What I’m seeing in the latest advances are improved statistical algorithms and lots more data to train on, but nothing I would consider a revolutionary new approach to AI. It’s still very capable of producing garbage output, and scaling the new AI systems down to specific applications doesn’t always seem that easy. It’ll probably help a lot in medical diagnoses or retrieving relevant law cases, but I can’t see it being much more useful when it comes to something like new customer chat applications, except that the new chat programs can give you the same useless answers in a more conversational tone.

Ever since I got my CS degree in 1983, I’ve heard all kinds of reasons that computer programmers and software developers are doomed, yet those jobs only increased. AI doesn’t really write code, although it does do a better job at going out and finding template code that developers can use than current search systems do. I expect that there will be plenty of new software and non-software jobs in an attempt to develop endless AI applications.

[jym626]

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