By O'Ryan Johnson
Publication Date: 2026-01-15 01:13:00
interview JP Gownder, vice president and chief analyst at analyst firm Forrester, remains unconvinced that AI will revolutionize productivity.
“Where we are today, we don’t see it,” he said The Register in an interview this week.
During our conversation, Gownder cited the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, which suggests that the introduction of the personal computer also did not lead to an increase in productivity, which increased by 2.7 percent annually from 1947 to 1973, but only 2.1 percent between 1990 and 2001.
“So despite all those PCs, (productivity growth) was much lower. And (from) 2007 to 2019 it was 1.5 percent. When you look at those numbers, productivity is the basis for job replacement and for job growth and a whole bunch of other things. But when you look at it…you start to understand that information technology productivity isn’t always measured in as linear a way as people assume. That’s just not the case…
