Artificial Intelligence (AI) will strongly shape our future prosperity and well-being. Because of its generic nature, AI will have an impact on all business sectors, our private lives and society as a whole. AI is not an end goal itself. It is a powerful tool to improve our international competitive position and helps solve economic and societal issues. Exactly how great the economic potential is, remained unanswered for the Netherlands.
Until today. Because during the NL AIC event for participants, McKinsey & Company published their report on the economic potential of AI for the Netherlands. This potential is significant, because if the Netherlands is able to fully adopt AI, economic growth through the use of AI could reach up to 1.2% GDP per year. Especially new AI applications that companies, governments and citizens can engage with will increase our productivity.
In addition to the economic effects, there are also welfare effects that society will benefit from. Converted to GDP effects, McKinsey calculates that these welfare effects contribute up to 0.4%. In order to realize this potential growth, it is important that the Netherlands increases its focus on this area. The crucial question is: how can we achieve this? McKinsey uses their AI Readiness Index to provide insight into how countries perform in relation to each other. The Netherlands scores the 11th place worldwide and in comparison to the comparable countries in the regional study on the 4th place. It is clear that the Netherlands can and sometimes must improve.
McKinsey indicates in which areas the Netherlands can improve. In terms of investment levels (both public and private) and the number of AI researchers and patents, the Netherlands scores below average.
Furthermore, there is room for improvement in the area of talent and data availability. With the NL AIC, the Netherlands has laid a foundation for strong public-private partnerships with a learning approach. This allows the necessary investments to be used to address the above-mentioned areas for improvement.
