Execs Paint Rosy Picture of AI's Productivity Potential

The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis has released research showing that executives are describing AI's effect on productivity in the future tense, rather than as a current reality.

The study analyzed over 490,000 earnings call transcripts from publicly traded U.S. companies between 2000 and 2025, finding that only about 15% of productivity-related sentences mentioned AI by year-end 2025.

Of those AI-related sentences, a staggering 95% referred to future gains in productivity, with a similar tone applied to the rest, 75% of non-AI related sentences also described productivity as increasing.

This optimism has yet to translate into actual productivity growth, however. The researchers cite data showing utilization-adjusted total factor productivity grew just 0.07% over the four quarters ending in the first quarter of 2026.