Opinion | Why U.S. productivity is on the upswing.

Luke Pardue is policy director of the Aspen Economic Strategy Group.

The business world is brimming with optimism over the potential of artificial intelligence.

The consulting firm McKinsey & Co. declared in a 2023 report that “Generative AI is poised to unleash the next wave of productivity,” adding value roughly the size of the U.K.’s economy to global growth each year. During the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, corporate chief executives predicted that advances in AI would enable “productivity on steroids,” as ServiceNow’s Bill McDermott put it.