What Has AI Actually Done For Us?
The most quoted number in AI is $15.7 trillion, PwC's estimate of what AI could add to the global economy by 2030. It was produced by a consultancy, and every consultancy has an incentive to make the number sound big. Treat it as an order of magnitude, not a forecast. The more interesting question is what AI is delivering today.
Medicine
AI-assisted analysis of X-rays and MRIs helps clinicians spot anomalies the human eye might miss. The same pattern recognition is applied to EEG, MEG and ECG scans to flag problems with the brain, muscles or heart earlier than manual review alone. AI can also process thousands of medical papers in seconds, which is less glamorous than diagnosis but arguably more valuable at scale. Wearables now analyse heart rate, sleep and blood pressure continuously, not once a year.
The quiet wins
The most defensible AI business cases are rarely the flashy ones. Fraud systems flag a card suddenly used in another country far faster than any manual check, across every transaction, anywhere, at any moment. An Australian electricity provider used image processing to find potential faults in power lines, saving engineers countless hours reviewing aerial photos. In farming, AI reads multispectral images to spot nutrient deficiencies or pests before the human eye can. None of this needed a press release. It quietly removed a tedious task from a skilled person's week.
Jobs, honestly
AI is projected to create 133 million new jobs globally by 2030. That is a gross figure, not a net one, and it sits alongside well-documented displacement in repetitive, rules-based roles. The jobs that disappear and the jobs that appear are rarely the same jobs, held by the same people, in the same places. The transition matters more than the headline total.
The plumbing
Most of us already use AI daily without noticing: streaming recommendations, shopping suggestions, navigation apps predicting journey times, customer-service chatbots parsing what you actually mean. An estimated 33 million autonomous vehicles are forecast on the road by 2040, but the lighter-touch version of that technology is already in your pocket.
What I would do
Capture the gains responsibly rather than chasing the hype. Start with the unglamorous use cases, measure the return, and govern them properly.
A caveat: the figures come from PwC and university and trade write-ups as of September 2026, and the page is refreshed annually as the numbers move.
The research behind it: The Benefits of AI, 2026 Edition
David Viney built WPP Open, a $350m-a-year agentic AI platform, and now runs Alchemy Consulting from London. He works as a fractional CIO in London, a technology board advisor for founders, CEOs and chairs, and an AI governance and strategy consultant built on his MASTER-AI framework. He leads enterprise ERP transformation programmes, provides cyber security consulting in London including fractional CISO cover, and offers technology leadership coaching for CIOs and heads of IT. Most engagements begin with a fixed-price Technology MOT.