The second edition of the Funds Society Leaders Summit, held in collaboration with CFA Society Spain, featured an analysis by MetLife Investment Management, in which Drew T. Matus, Chief Market Strategist at the firm, focused on how he views the world right now and how he believes it will evolve; its risks and, above all, the impact of artificial intelligence.
Matus stated that growth is being driven primarily by AI: the United States and Korea are experiencing accelerated growth, but the rest of the world is facing some difficulties in recovering from last year’s weakness. All of this occurs within a context of inflation and high yields, “which is not necessarily a bad thing.”
The expert observes that, despite geopolitical volatility and inflation, recession expectations in any of these regions remain quite low. “People feel very comfortable that the status quo will hold indefinitely, which is somewhat strange given that yields are normalizing and there is significant geopolitical risk,” he comments, pointing out that the only country behaving remotely abnormally compared to the recent period is Japan.
Matus explains that artificial intelligence, as it spreads across the globe and is used more frequently in different regions, “could narrow the gap between the United States and the rest of the world in terms of productivity growth, which would imply reducing the differential in potential GDP growth.” This circumstance could provide a solution to issues such as government deficits, because according to the expert, “if you manage to grow out of the deficit, you will be in a fairly favorable position.”
However, according to Matus, the future could bring either a narrowing or a widening of this gap. Ultimately, “it will depend on policymakers, in this case in Europe, although the same applies to parts of Asia,” meaning “it is up to policymakers to determine whether they want to close this gap or not, and how to regulate the emerging technologies that could enable it.”
Risks
One of the main risks Matus sees regarding AI does not lie in the promise of the technology itself. CEOs believe it is enough to simply implement this technology in their companies and that giving everyone access to the tool will solve everything on its own. “But the reality is that you need a company designed to use the new technology,” he notes. From an operational standpoint, leveraging it is far more difficult than at any previous time, and now “CEOs have begun to realize that they have made many promises they cannot keep.”
Matus highlights the lack of evidence suggesting that AI is leaving young people out of work. In fact, in the United States, hiring is happening, but for experienced workers, “which is precisely the opposite of what is intended with AI, because experienced workers are the ones who can be replaced and are usually more expensive.” Ultimately, he observes neither an increase in unemployment or underemployment, nor high productivity levels in the United States. Specifically, the latest quarterly figures align with the average of the last 10 years, and even the last 50 years. “If we look for AI in the data, we haven’t found it yet,” he states. Therefore, he sees an opportunity for the markets, “as we have not yet seen the positive impact of AI on the broader economy, neither in the United States nor, frankly, anywhere else.”
Another aspect Matus finds concerning is that a sector that should benefit from artificial intelligence and all the productivity gains it brings—the financial sector—is not experiencing a strong market run on par with the tech sector or the broader market. “The market has bought into the idea that AI will be a revolutionary technology, but conclusive proof is still lacking,” Matus notes.
Ultimately, the expert concludes that the market is betting on short-term optimism around AI. But the reality is that AI will take time to integrate into the economy. For this reason, he anticipates that as AI spreads throughout the economy, “it will have all the effects that are promised in the short term, but we won’t see them anytime soon.”
The Long Term
How do we expect this to play out in the long term? To understand productivity gains in the United States, Matus points to technology and its optimal utilization. The methodology the country used to achieve this—through employee training—was “the right one, whether due to lower regulation or any other reason.”
Matus puts figures on potential U.S. growth through the application of AI: between 4% and 4.5% over the next 10 years, “something we have never seen before in a developed market economy.” It would only be comparable to what was seen following China’s entry into the WTO. Matus highlights at this point that this is one of the reasons why, when analyzing the U.S. deficit or perceiving that Americans do not care about it, “it is because we really don’t care; we believe we can outgrow it.”
There will also be shifts in the economy, as has happened in other technological revolutions. In fact, Matus does not rule out that some of the largest companies in 2025 will no longer hold those positions in the future, just as occurred with the giants of the 1990s. What became clear then—and what Matus considers a risk when weighing artificial intelligence and all the changes occurring in the global economy—is that the companies that figured out how to use the new technology are precisely the ones that made it into that group.
“One or two of them are directly related to technology, but in general, they simply take a different approach to new technologies. So, when reflecting on what the world will look like in 2035, 2040, and 2050, the winners and losers will not necessarily be the names appearing today on the front pages of the Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal. It is really about companies that are figuring out how to use the technology being offered to them,” he concludes.