Commonwealth Club Of California Podcast

Recent advances in artificial intelligence are raising hopes of a U.S. productivity boom by automating mundane tasks, improving decision-making, and opening up new business models and opportunities. At the same time, many workers are skeptical, fearing that the new tools may make them obsolete. What impact will AI have on businesses and employees in the long and short term? And how can we be more productive while also ensuring that the benefits will be distributed equally? A new report by the McKinsey Global Institute, "Rekindling Productivity for a New Era," sheds light on these questions. The study examines which sectors and geographic regions, such as California, have been the most innovative and productive, and what it took to achieve that success. "To unlock value from truly new technology, firms must reconfigure how they work, often over sustained periods, as they tinker with processes and workers adapt their skills," the report finds. The study also argues that maintaining the status quo is not an opti