Paul Jenkins
McKinsey commentary
Senior partner
Generative AI is on everyone’s minds, so it’s not surprising to see significant interest in it—as well as AI more broadly—reflected in the survey. As the survey indicates, the greatest immediate interest is in improving productivity through intelligent-process automation. That’s a natural starting point, because it’s something everyone can understand, and the value is quite straightforward. But it’s important to note that this really is just the start.
I like to think of generative AI’s impact as happening across three horizons. The first one is around productivity, which is where much of the energy is today. The second one is around innovation, where generative AI can enable totally new capabilities, such as mass personalization of communications, and offers to individuals a synthesis and summation at a speed and scale that were unimaginable before. And then there’s a third horizon, where true disruption happens—and where the biggest opportunity for business building lies.
Any business that is based on knowledge or has lots of knowledge workers is squarely in this third horizon. With the power of generative AI, you can imagine certain kinds of services—from financial to healthcare—becoming available to more people, at a lower cost. Although companies’ leaders seem to think that this horizon won’t dramatically affect them in the next five years, that may turn out to be wishful thinking. And though there aren’t yet many new businesses where generative AI is at the core of the value proposition, it would be wise to assume there are lots of people working to develop them. So that horizon might not be as far away as some people think.