Current research supports two statements at once, without contradiction. At the level of individual tasks, there is compelling evidence of substantial AI-driven gains. At the level of entire companies, and even more so the broader economy, those gains remain muted and difficult to measure.
Task-level evidence is stronger than many assume
The debate over macroeconomic productivity data misses an important point. At the level of individual tasks, the best-known studies provide clear evidence of measurable performance gains.
In customer service, a study published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics found that the number of resolved issues per hour rose by roughly 14 to 15 percent after the introduction of a generative AI assistant. Less experienced workers benefited the most. As early as 2023, Noy and Zhang found that ChatGPT significantly reduced completion time and improved quality on average for professional writing tasks.
Results from software development follow the same pattern. An early GitHub Copilot study found a 55.8 percent faster completion rate on a clearly defined coding task. In three field experiments at Microsoft, Accenture, and a Fortune 100 company, the number of completed tasks rose by an average of about 26 percent with AI assistance. In a randomized experiment at Google, developers worked up to 20 percent faster.
