By Gary Marcus
Publication Date: 2026-06-07 15:33:00
I’ve just seen a graphic by John Burn-Murdoch on the FT that really gets to the heart of something I’ve been trying to articulate. AI produces a lot of output (which fits many people’s informal idea of productivity), but hasn’t delivered much in terms of ROI for many companies (according to studies from MIT, McKinsey, Bain, and many others) and hasn’t made a significant difference in GDP.
The FT’s special graphic happens to be about mobile apps (h/t Jen Zhu). But you could make similar charts in many areas: lots of nominal productivity, but no big real-world impact.
Something similar could be said about books, for example. GenAI has resulted in many more books, but it’s not clear whether these are better books or whether (sorry, I don’t have the data immediately available) more books are sold. Here you will find the number of books that have been available over time The Washington Post:
Book sales, however have declined slightly over the same period. And I don’t hear any argument for getting books better.
The post…
