Digital disruption and artificial intelligence (AI)

AI offers great promise and has spurred heavy investment. But how could the economy change? Over what timeframe? And who will reap the rewards? In our latest report, we look at these questions and more – and explore what it all means for investors.

Over the short term, we anticipate moderate productivity gains as AI reshapes specific tasks and industry practices. If AI can drive innovation at scale, it could expand supply capacity, ease inflation pressures, and boost economic growth more meaningfully. Yet realizing this vision will first require a large-scale infrastructure buildout across industries and broadening adoption.

We see AI rolling out unevenly across sectors in its adoption phase. The chart below shows an estimate of the average share of tasks across select industries where use of AI might halve the time taken for the task. Much like past technological revolutions, AI may transform today’s workforce and potentially require widespread reskilling – or be even more transformative.

We estimate investment in data centers and AI chips could surpass U.S.$700 billion each year by 2030 – equivalent to over 2% of U.S. GDP.¹ Total spending across AI and energy infrastructure could approach industrial revolution levels, in our view. Such spending could add to inflation in the near-term, including via higher near term energy costs. AI-driven efficiency gains may later offset some of the initial spike in energy demand.