由人工智能驱动的下一次创新革命

The innovation challenge: Good ideas are harder to findInnovation has been the driver of the extraordinary progress from which humankind hasbenefited for a couple of centuries, but it faces a largely hidden threat: Innovation is becomingharder and more expensive.It’s instructive here to take the long view. For most of recorded human history, improvementsin human welfare from generation to generation have been limited. Take, for example, GDP percapita as a measure of economic prosperity. For most of human history, roughly until the early1800s, the measure barely moved to $1,200. But since that time, it has grown by more than 14times (Exhibit 1).1Human health has followed a similar trajectory—low for centuries and onlysignificantly improving in recent generations. In 1900, for example, the average life expectancyof a newborn was 32 years. By 2021, this had more than doubled to 71 years.1Jutta Bolt and Jan Luiten van Zanden, Maddison Project Database 2023;Jutta Bolt and Jan Luiten van Zanden, “Maddison-style estimates of the evolution of the world economy: A new 2023 update,”Journal of Economic Surveys, 2024, Volume 39.2Saloni Dattani et al., “Life expectancy,” Our World in Data, 2023.Exhibit 1Web <2025><AI innovation>Exhibit <1> of <5>GDP per capita globally over the past ~2,000 years,$ thousandsSource: Maddison Project Database version 2023: Jutta Bolt and Jan Luiten van Zanden, “Maddison-style estimates of the evolution of the world economy: Anew 2023 update,”Journal of Economic Surveys, Apr 3, 2024; McKinsey analysisBuilding on scientific discoveries, the Industrial Revolution sparked greatimprovements in human welfare.McKinsey & Company005101520 21500500 20001000 These and many other improvements in our lives have been driven by a set of scientific discoveriesand products engineered based on those breakthroughs. These innovations have enabledeconomies to grow and people’s lives to improve. The steam engine helped power the IndustrialRevolution. Vaccines that prevent diseases such as smallpox, measles, and polio continue to savemillions of lives each year; infant mortality is estimated to have decreased 40 percent in the past50 years because of vaccines.3The invention of the integrated circuit for computing and lasers forcommunication through fiber-optic cables helped create the global internet.But the rate of progress enabled by innovation now faces an under-recognized threat: Innovationis getting more difficult and more expensive.Even as science advances, R&D productivity is on the waneBy many metrics, and in many fields, each dollar spent on R&D has been buying less innovationover time. In other words, R&D productivity has been declining.Take the semiconductor industry. With integrated circuits embedded in products that supportnearly every part of our lives, this sector has advanced in accordance with “Moore’s Law”—theremarkable observation put forward by Intel cofounder Gordon Moore that the number oftransistors on an integrated circuit will double about every two years.4This is roughly equivalentto an exponential growth rate of 35 percent annually in transistors per dollar.But this level of performance increase has been bought at the cost of increasing expendituresin R&D. Nicholas Bloom, an economics professor at Stanford University, and his researchcollaborators published a paper in 2020 that examined the real R&D expenditures ofsemiconductor companies and equipment manufacturers and estimated that their annualresearch effort rose by a factor of 18 between 1971 and 2014.5In other words, maintainingthe performance growth rate in Moore’s Law required 18 times more inflation-adjusted R&Dspending in 2014 than it did in 1971 (Exhibit 2).3Andrew J. Shattock et al., “Contribution of vaccination to improved survival and health: Modelling 50 years of the ExpandedProgramme on Immunization,”Lancet, 2024, Volume 403, Number 10441.4Moore’s original 1965 statement suggested doubling every year, but he updated it in 1975.5Nicholas Bloom et al., “Are ideas getting harder to find?,”American Economic Review, 2020, Volume 110, Number 4.The rate of progress enabled byinnovation faces an under-recognizedthreat: Innovation is getting moredifficult and more expensive. Exhibit 2<AI innovation>Exhibit <2> of <5>Inflation-adjusted semiconductor R&D expenditures, 1971–2014,¹multiples (factor increases)1Nominal semiconductor R&D expenditures deflated by nominal wage of high-skilled workers.Source: Nicholas Bloom et al., “Are ideas getting harder to find?,”American Economic Review, Apr 2020Increased real R&D expenditures are required to maintain Moore’s Law ongrowth in the density of semiconductor chips.McKinsey & Company197005×10×15×20×It’s not just semiconductors. The biopharmaceutical industry has produced innovative productsused to prevent and treat many diseases, enabling millions of people to live longer and healthierlives. But the challenge of declining R&D productivity in that industry led Jack Scannell, amultidiscip