In an interview with the Financial Times, Manyika said: "Right now, everyone from my old colleagues at McKinsey Global Institute to Goldman Sachs are putting out these extraordinary economic potential numbers -- in the trillions -- [but] it's going to take a whole bunch of actions, innovations, investments, even enabling policy ...The productivity gains are not guaranteed. They're going to take a lot of work."

In 1987, economist Robert Solow famously observed that the computer age was evident everywhere except in productivity statistics. Manyika warned that we could face a similar scenario with AI.

"We could have a version of that—where we see this technology everywhere, on our phones, in all these chatbots, but it's done nothing to transform the economy in that real fundamental way," he told the FT.

He said that applying generative AI to draft software code is insufficient. "In the US, the tech sector is about four per cent of the labour force. Even if the entire tech sector adopted it 100 per cent, it doesn't matter from a labour productivity standpoint."

Instead, the key lies in "very large sectors" such as healthcare and retail. Former British prime minister Sir Tony Blair has suggested that people "will have an AI nurse, probably an AI doctor, just as you'll have an AI tutor."

Manyika, however, is more measured in his outlook: "In most of those cases, those professions will be assisted by AI. I don't think any of those occupations will  be replaced by AI, not in any conceivable future."