曼彻斯特大学正在审视为何人工智能工具的日益普及迄今未能转化为预期的生产力增长，然而研究人员难以给出简单的答案来弥合这一“AI雄心差距”。
The University of Manchester is scrutinizing why growing adoption of AI tools has so far failed to translate into the forecast productivity gains, however, researchers are struggling to give easy answers to close the "AI ambition gap."
在一份同样名为《AI雄心差距》的报告中，这所英国大学的生产力研究院探讨了人工智能取得的进展及其不断扩大的应用范围，并阐述了企业领导者和政策制定者可采取哪些措施来实现潜在收益。该报告由IT服务公司Bytes Technology Group委托编写。
In a report, also called “The AI Ambition Gap,” the UK university’s Productivity Institute mulls over the advances that have been made in AI and the expanding adoption of it, and sets out what business leaders and policymakers can do to realize the potential benefits. The report was commissioned by IT services biz Bytes Technology Group.
缺乏成效的一个原因是，组织在员工再培训、重组工作方式及其他调整方面进行了大量前期投入。这些成本即刻显现，但回报要等到后期才会到来。报告指出，另一个原因是，AI工具虽能提升单个任务层面的生产力，但这些增益不会自动转化为工人整个岗位或整个组织层面的生产力提高。
One reason for the lack of results is that organizations have invested heavily up front on retraining staff, reorganizing the way they work and other adjustments. Those costs show up straight away, yet the payback doesn’t come until later. Another reason, the report suggests, is that AI tools can raise productivity at the level of individual tasks, but these gains do not automatically translate into greater productivity across a worker’s whole role or the entire organization.
报告引用的例子显示，使用GitHub Copilot的软件开发人员完成的任务数量增加了约26%；使用ChatGPT进行常规写作和分析的专业人士，任务完成时间减少了40%，而输出质量提高了18%。然而，一项关于AI开发工具的研究发现，这些工具使编码活动增加了约240%，但实际软件发布数量仅增长了约30%。这种差距源于人类在发布前仍需检查和测试其工作成果。
It cites the example of software developers using GitHub Copilot who completed around 26 percent more tasks, and professionals using ChatGPT for routine writing and analysis that reduced task completion time by 40 percent while improving the quality of the output by 18 percent. However, a study of AI dev tools found these have increased coding activity by approximately 240 percent, while the number of actual software releases has only grown by about 30 percent. The gap is due to humans still needing to check and test their work before release.
研究人员表示，高任务暴露于AI并不会自动使工人更具生产力。工作通常将可自动化的活动与需要判断、协调、客户互动和批判性思维的任务结合在一起。
High task exposure to AI does not automatically make a worker more productive, the researchers say. Jobs typically combine automatable activities with tasks that require judgement, coordination, client interaction and critical thinking.
随着 AI 移除或加速某些活动，那些互补的人类任务便成了节省时间的制约因素，也成了将任务层面的收益转化为更高生产率的制约因素。报告继续指出，因此工作成果取决于任务构成和互补的人类专长。报告认为，AI 可能部分取代现有任务中的劳动力，同时也会创造新任务，让工人在其中保持比较优势。研究人员称，这对英国可能是个好消息。
As AI removes or accelerates some activities, those complementary human tasks become the constraint on time saving and the translation of task-level gains into greater productivity Job outcomes therefore depend on task composition and complementary human expertise, the report continues. It suggests AI may in part displace labor from existing tasks, while also creating new tasks in which workers retain a comparative advantage. This could be good news for the UK, the researchers state.
与其他五个国家（美国、巴西、哥伦比亚、印度和南非）相比，英国从事既高度接触 AI 又具备“高互补性”职业的工人占比最高。这在一定程度上与该国庞大的金融和专业商业服务部门有关，这些部门的特点是认知类职业占比很高。这倒是件好事，因为政府正寄希望于利用 AI 推动经济复苏，这一战略在去年初已列出。
Compared with five other nations (US, Brazil, Colombia, India and South Africa), Blighty has the highest share of workers in occupations with both high exposure to AI and "high complementarity," it claims. This is in part related to the country’s large financial and professional business service sectors, which are characterized by a high share of cognitive occupations. This is just as well, as the government is pinning its hopes on using AI to drive economic recovery in a strategy outlined at the start of last year.
按欧洲标准看，英国的 AI 产业规模相对较大，报告引用经合组织（OECD）近期的估计称，高接触度经济体如英国和美国，每年劳动生产率增益可能在 0.4 到 1.3 个百分点之间。报告指出，即使每年提升 0.5 到 0.7 个百分点左右，若这种效应能持续，相较于英国过去十年停滞的生产率表现，也将代表显著的阶跃式变化。
Britain's AI sector is relatively large by European standards, and the report cites recent OECD estimates that high-exposure economies such as the UK and the US could see annual labor productivity gains of between 0.4 and 1.3 percentage points. Even an annual uplift of around 0.5 to 0.7 percentage points would represent a significant step change relative to the UK’s stalled productivity performance over the past decade, it says, if this effect is sustained.
生产率研究所列出了若干“相互强化的赋能因素”，以帮助组织弥补其指出的雄心差距。这些因素都不算特别令人意外，特别是如果你读过其他关于企业成功采用 AI 的建议报告。其中一项是管理层为组织设定战略方向，另一项是通过提升知识和数据素养来强化工人能力，帮助组织将个人洞见转化为共享学习。
The Productivity Institute lists several "mutually reinforcing enablers" to help organizations close the ambition gap it identifies. None is particularly surprising, especially if you have read other reports advising on corporate success with AI adoption. One is management setting strategic direction for the organization, another is strengthening worker capabilities through greater knowledge and data literacy to help organizations turn individual insight into shared learning.
其他措施包括实施AI治理，并专注于能够创造新产品、改进核心流程或解决以往棘手问题的应用场景。“当更快的任务执行带来整个企业更好的绩效时，AI的生产力潜力才会变为现实，”生产力研究所教授、该报告主要作者Bart van Ark表示。“雄心差距在于这些个体效率提升与持续业务成果之间。弥合这一差距要求企业在技术之外，还要在管理、技能和工作流程重塑上进行投资。”
Others include implementing AI governance and focusing on applications that can create new products, improve core processes or solve previously intractable problems. "AI's productivity potential becomes real when faster tasks lead to better performance across the business," said Bart van Ark, professor at The Productivity Institute and lead author on the report. "The ambition gap lies between those individual efficiencies and sustained business results. Closing it requires firms to invest in management, skills and the redesign of workflows alongside the technology."
结论是，企业必须保持信心并持续投资AI，如果做对了事情，最终收益自会到来。这些做法包括：聚焦与战略、客户价值及运营瓶颈相关的高价值用例，并将AI视为一场职场重塑。报告称，政策制定者可协助企业识别相关机遇，从而降低采用风险和不确定性，为企业提供帮助。
The conclusion is that companies must have faith and keep investing in AI, and eventually the benefits will come if you are doing the right things. These include focusing on high-value use cases linked to strategy, customer value and operational bottlenecks, plus treating AI as a workplace redesign. Policymakers could help out businesses here by assisting identifying relevant opportunities, the report says, to reduce adoption risks and uncertainty.
本周发布的其他报告传递的信息更为明确：Gartner表示，75%的企业董事会成员尚未从AI使用中看到任何生产力提升或成本降低；私募股权巨头阿波罗全球管理公司（Apollo Global Management）则认为，只有最大的科技供应商正在享受某种程度的AI红利。®
Other reports published this week were more defined in their message: Gartner said 75 percent of corporate board members have yet to see any productivity gains or reduce costs from AI use, and private equity biz Apollo Global Management reckons only the biggest tech vendors are enjoying some sort of AI payoff. ®