Biggest losers of AI boom are knowledge workers, McKinsey says

The worldwide boom in generative artificial intelligence will usher in an age of accelerated productivity and greater prosperity for some – and profound disruption for others, primarily knowledge workers, according to a new report by consultants McKinsey & Co.

Whole swaths of business activity, from sales and marketing to customer operations, are set to become more embedded in software – with potential economic benefits of as much as $US4.4 trillion ($6.5 trillion), about 4.4 per cent of the world economy’s output – according to the study by McKinsey’s research arm.

Generative AI will give humans a new “superpower”, and the economy a much-needed productivity injection, said Lareina Yee, a senior partner at the firm and chair of McKinsey Technology, in the report.

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 per cent and 0.6 per cent over the next 20 years, it found.

“Business leaders need to understand which activities can be changed, and how they want to rethink that,” said Yee. “That is a leadership choice, and it’s also execution.”

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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.

A few years ago, McKinsey had estimated that about half of worker hours worldwide were spent on tasks that could be automated. Now it’s raising the figure to as high as 60 per cent to 70 per cent. Employees could find that their time is reallocated – or that their jobs disappear. “Workers will need support in learning new skills,” the report said. “Some will change occupations.”

About 75 per cent 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.