The firm’s new ‘AI productivity gains and the performance paradox’ report concludes that most current AI applications ‘accelerate existing work’ without redesigning workflows, a finding McKinsey is publishing while targeting 1:1 parity between its 40,000 human consultants and 40,000 AI agents by year-end. McKinsey’s strategy practice has published a new analysis arguing that the corporate world is grappling with what it calls an ‘AI paradox’: adoption of generative and agentic AI is growing, capital investment is accelerating, but ‘sustained impact on performance is elusive.’ The report, ‘AI productivity gains and the performance paradox’ , argues that most current AI applications are ‘tools that accelerate existing work’ but ‘largely preserve underlying workflows’, and that the larger productivity gains will only emerge once organisations redesign processes around AI rather than simply bolting it on top. The report’s central historical analogy is electricity in factories.…