Generative AI is developing rapidly, with considerable economic benefits.

McKinsey's latest AI report indicates that generative AI is developing at an astonishing pace, and its economic benefits and social impacts should not be underestimated. The report predicts that AI may reach human-level capabilities sooner than expected, with a median forecast before 2030.

Compared to the predictions made in 2017, the new report is more optimistic about the prospects for AI development. The report points out that AI technology has deeply permeated every aspect of our lives. Unlike the sensational yet limited impact of AlphaGo defeating Lee Sedol in 2016, this year generative AI products such as ChatGPT, Copilot, and Stable Diffusion have swept across various industries, allowing ordinary people to easily use AI for creation and work.

The report focuses on the speed of AI development. In just a few months, the performance of ChatGPT equipped with GPT-4 has significantly improved, and Anthropic's Claude has also increased its processing speed by 10 times. Currently, our understanding of generative AI capabilities is still in its infancy, and it is necessary to conduct in-depth research into its future potential.

From the perspective of economic benefits, the report analyzes the value of generative AI from two viewpoints:

1. Analysis of use cases for enterprises. The report identifies 63 generative AI use cases, covering 16 business functions, with an expected annual economic benefit of $2.6 trillion to $4.4 trillion. This is an increase of 15% to 40% compared to the predictions made in 2017.

2. Analysis of the Impact on Occupations. The report analyzes the potential impact of generative AI on approximately 850 occupations, estimating its effect on over 2,100 jobs globally. The results show that the total economic benefit of generative AI could reach between $6.1 trillion and $7.9 trillion annually.

From a business functionality perspective, customer operations, marketing and sales, software engineering, and research and development account for 75% of the total value of generative AI use cases. Generative AI can also bring value to the entire company by improving enterprise knowledge management systems.

From an industry perspective, the retail sector could gain approximately $310 billion in additional value, mainly from improvements in marketing and customer operations. The high-tech industry primarily benefits from increased efficiency in software development.

The report predicts that based on the current performance of generative AI, its capabilities will reach human levels faster than previously estimated in various aspects. For example, the time for AI to achieve human-level natural language understanding has been moved up from 2027 to 2023.

The impact of generative AI on knowledge work is the greatest, especially in activities involving decision-making and collaboration. The potential for automating professional expertise has increased by 34 percentage points, while the potential for automating management and talent development has risen from 16% to 49%.

In the face of the rapid development of AI, the report suggests that all parties actively respond:

• Business leaders need to consider how to leverage AI to create value while managing risks and adjusting human resource strategies.
• Government policymakers need to consider issues such as workforce planning and policy support.
• Individuals need to pay attention to the development of new technologies and seek a balance between the conveniences and impacts brought by AI.

Overall, this report provides a comprehensive analysis of the significant impact of the generative AI boom on the socio-economy, warranting deep reflection from all sectors.