Artificial Intelligence is already changing how the world runs. Right now, the world is worried about AI could cause jobs to be lost. Automation in factories, generative tools for content generation means colossal fears of mass redundancy have made headlines everywhere. Yet, there is another chapter to this story, an even more transformative one, and one that is immensely promising.
What if instead of just replacing jobs, AI could spur AI-led economic growth on a historic magnitude? This technology can create productivity expansion, create whole new sectors, and create unprecedented global prosperity – just like we saw last with the industrial revolution. That doomsday scenario requires balance, and the untapped upside of AI deserves a louder voice in public discourse.
The Unspoken Upside of AI Is Growth, Not Just Redundancy
We often hear the warnings about how AI threatens our current jobs; some of which is valid. However, we are missing the more substantial point. AI can do mundane, repetitive, and time-consuming work faster, better, and all the time, leaving us to unleash human talent away from the mundane and toward creativity, strategy, and relationship building – things machines can’t replicate.
That is where the concept of AI-enabled economic growth becomes powerful. By freeing up human capital, companies can rethink workflows, expand into new markets, and scale quicker. History clearly illustrates that every technology shift in recent history (the telephone, electricity, and the internet) has created more jobs than it eliminated or destroyed. If AI technology is sensitive to workers and responsible, it has the potential to do the same.
A New Productivity Revolution Is Within Reach
Productivity is the heartbeat of economic growth. In recent decades, growth has slowed in most advanced economies, despite digital innovation. But AI has the potential to spark a productivity revolution by automating knowledge work, the very thing that digital tools haven’t cracked fully until now.
Tasks in legal, healthcare, coding, finance, and education can now be optimized or accelerated with AI. Instead of taking days, some business functions may be completed in hours. This leap in efficiency, when spread across industries, could lift global GDP at a pace not seen since the post-WWII boom.
How AI Could Bridge Global Development Gaps
The possibilities of technological change are not limited to affluent countries. Countries with incomes at the lower end of the income spectrum and emerging markets could have advantages of access to tools that may take decades of infrastructure we take for granted to access. Large language models could facilitate the development of smart agriculture systems, remote learning, and digital care at scale in areas of poverty and under-resourced regions of the world.
The thought of smallholders, harnessing AI to optimize yield, or students in rural India accessing tutoring services using large language models, is not a distant reality, but a near-term possibility for transforming productivity and income growth, in an effort to shrink global inequality.
New Economic Sectors and Jobs Are Already Emerging
AI will change or even remove some jobs but it is creating entirely new industries as well. Prompt engineering, AI operations, synthetic data generation, AI ethics consulting, and more. The demand for skilled human oversight will only increase as the tools become more capable.
The real difference and the real potential is that AI is allowing small teams to deliver what used to take a whole team or even a whole department to deliver. This will allow for unprecedented levels of entrepreneurship and innovation. The promise of an AI-driven economic expansion depends not just on big tech, but also on the millions of startups and small businesses that AI enables.
What It Takes to Realize the Growth Dividend
Leaders must take great care in order to turn promise into prosperity. Governments must invest in reskilling and education for people to manage AI use in the workplace. Companies must innovate in how work is designed and how roles and incentives are structured, not just in their product.
It is also clear that collaboration across countries is imperative. If there is no clarity around ethical and regulatory frameworks, growth and scaling may be erratic or damaging. Governments and companies need guardrails in place that ultimately enable the responsible scaling and economic growth that harnesses AI’s potential responsibly and sustainably, to support inclusive and sustainable economic growth.
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