Computing cost fell about seven trillion-fold between 1940 and 2006 (Nordhaus); AI differs from traditional computing by handling tacit knowledge, in Polanyi's sense of "we know more than we can tell".
0.548 SD to 0.139 SDeducation-based productivity gap without vs with AI access (Cruces et al. 2026, N=1,174)
69% of firms use AI on average: US 78%, UK 71%, Germany 65%, Australia 59%.
69%firms across the US, UK, Germany and Australia that currently use AI
Bain's AI readiness survey: 80% of generative AI use cases met or exceeded expectations, yet only 23% of companies can tie initiatives to measurable revenue gains or cost reductions.
80%generative AI use cases that met or exceeded expectations in Bain's AI readiness survey
Central (medium adoption, expanded capabilities) scenario: AI adds 0.1-0.95 percentage points a year to per capita real income growth across OECD countries over 10 years.
0.1-0.95 ppAI contribution to annual per capita real income growth across OECD countries over 10 years, central scenario
Five categories of technological change: labour-augmenting, capital-augmenting, automating, expertise-leveling and new task-creating.
52%US workers surveyed in 2024 who are worried about how AI will affect their jobs
Sample: 51 cases from 41 organisations in 7 countries and 5 regions, representing over a million employees, studied over 5 months.
77%hardest challenges that were invisible costs: change management, data quality, process redesign
Only about 15% of organisations use AI to fundamentally redesign how work is performed (citing Accenture, 2025).
~15%organisations using AI to fundamentally redesign how work is performed
The US "Winning the Race: America's AI Action Plan" (2025) treats open models as having "geostrategic value"; China's "Global AI Governance Action Plan" frames open source as global sharing aimed at the Global South.
nearly 1,000%growth in DeepSeek model downloads on model-sharing platforms since R1's release in January 2025 (US CAISI)
Five overarching recommendations: scale governance with degrees of autonomy, keep human control and accountability, monitor continuously after deployment, use defense-in-depth and containment, and assess risk at system level rather than model level.
Top-performing enterprises process over 90 percent of orders without human intervention; the rest need manual handling for pricing discrepancies, customer-specific terms, incomplete orders, stock allocation, credit risk and compliance.
over 90 percentshare of orders top-performing enterprises already process without human intervention (per Capgemini)
68% of AI researchers worked in industry by 2019, up from 48% in 2001.
$1.5 millionextra annual earnings of top 1% publishing industry AI scientists over comparable academics, a fivefold increase since 2001