Productivity! Streamlined workflows! New jobs that don’t exist yet! Enhanced quality of life! Massive increases in global GDP!

The optimists believe AI is a foundational change comparable to electricity and the steam engine. In this view, AI can automate and augment human tasks across all economic sectors, create new efficiencies, and foster the creation of entirely new jobs and industries, culminating in significant gains for society.

The core of the optimistic scenario is that AI’s primary function will be to enhance human performance, not to replace it, boosting productivity without causing widespread structural unemployment.

It’s easy to be cynical (oh dear god it’s easy to be cynical these days), but these aren’t ridiculous assumptions. Goldman Sachs predicts AI will increase global GDP by $7 trillion (or 7%) over 10 years. McKinsey estimates increases of $2.6-$4.4 trillion annually at minimum. PwC estimates a staggering $15 trillion boost by 2030.

Do I need to say these projections are a best-case scenario? The analysts are imagining a widespread, frictionless diffusion of AI technology across the entire economy. I can imagine that happy productive world. I can imagine lots of things. I have a good imagination. We’ll come back later to hurdles like organizational inertia, regulatory delays, and high implementation costs.

But if you’re a business leader, you can’t ignore those numbers, regardless of what asterisks or qualifications you think might apply. The consulting firm ResearchFDI puts it this way:

“This windfall, driven by productivity leaps and consumer benefits, is not just a number; it’s a wake-up call for economic development leaders, decision-makers, and policymakers like you. Imagine your region riding that wave, snagging high-value investors, boosting local economies, and outpacing rivals, all with AI as your engine. This isn’t just a futuristic fantasy; it’s a strategy you can start today. . . . AI offers unmatched power to attract investment, optimize urban planning, and align workforces with tomorrow’s demands. This isn’t about jumping on a tech bandwagon. It’s about harnessing AI for tangible, game-changing growth.”

There are already reports of sharply higher productivity in some industries that have embraced AI – and remember, we’re less than three years into the AI era.

In business management, AI-driven tools streamline administrative tasks, enhance decision-making by processing vast amounts of data, and improve customer relationship management (CRM) through personalized recommendations.

Project management tools can automate timeline updates, predict delays, suggest resource reallocation, and generate progress reports

In healthcare, AI analyzes medical images with remarkable accuracy and speed for early disease detection and accelerates drug discovery by simulating chemical interactions with biological targets.

In manufacturing, AI systems are used for predictive maintenance, quality control, and demand forecasting. And the robots, don’t forget the robots. (China is embracing factory robots far more aggressively than the US, “strengthening China’s already dominant global role in manufacturing.” Yikes.)

In agriculture, AI is used for crop and soil monitoring through the analysis of satellite images and sensor data to detect nutrient deficiencies, pests, and diseases early. Agricultural robotics, powered by AI, can handle tasks like planting, weeding, and harvesting with high precision.

On and on it goes, in finance, construction, logistics and navigation, marketing, software development, sales, and more or less every other job done by human beings.

Those are just the enhancements to jobs we already know about, and that’s only part of the story.

An analysis by Goldman Sachs Research found that 60% of US workers today are in occupations that did not exist in 1940, with over 85% of employment growth since then coming from technology-driven job creation.

New job roles are already emerging for AI specialists, AI system managers, and professionals implementing AI in healthcare, education, and design. If historical patterns repeat, we will live through the creation of new industries and entirely new tasks that are currently unpredictable.

Broaden your focus, because AI is not just about jobs. It offers the possibility of improving our quality of life in a thousand ways big and small.

AI can take over routine and repetitive tasks. That gives humans more time to focus on creative, strategic, and high-value activities.

If AI accelerates drug discovery and improves disease diagnosis, that means better health outcomes for us. With appropriate guardrails, large language models might someday be valuable mental health support tools that people can use for emotional support or to practice difficult conversations.

AI-powered robotics, assistive robot arms, and autonomous vehicles can help elderly adults and people with physical disabilities regain independence and mobility.

Educators and teachers are going through a difficult transition but the promise is that AI will help create personalized learning experiences for students, and develop “smart content” that adapts to individual learning styles.

AI tools may be used for fraud prevention in e-commerce and finance. AI might improve public safety by analyzing data from thousands of sensors and cameras to predict and pre-emptively address urban issues like environmental risks and security threats.

It’s obvious – AI stands for Awesome Improvements in our quality of life. This new technology is all good news with no downside and everything will be swell.

There are perhaps one or two teensy qualifications that should be called out, hardly worth mentioning, a touch of massive job losses, a pinch of social disruption, the possibility of human extinction, that sort of thing.

For this week, let’s assume it’s all going to be great forever, hallelujah, amen. We’ll spend some time with the pesky pessimists in the next article.