AI sector: Commercial shift raises macro risks – Standard Chartered

Standard Chartered's Global Research Team discusses how recent advances in Artificial Intelligence (AU), including Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6 and GPT 5.3-Codex, may accelerate commercial adoption compared with earlier waves that mainly boosted consumer surplus. The bank highlights potential macro implications for labour markets, corporate earnings and GDP growth, particularly for software-exporting economies such as Ireland and India.

New AI models push commercial adoption

"In our report, Does AI dominance underscore US exceptionalism?, we had argued that the impact of AI on productivity has been limited so far, as commercial adoption has been slow and most gains have been captured on a personal basis through a rise in consumer surplus."

"The recent release of Anthropic’s latest model Claude Opus 4.6, together with other AI model updates, potentially upends this trend."

"This, together with other new AI updates such as GPT 5.3-Codex, is increasing concerns about the potential macro implications of these releases, especially for labour markets and earnings of traditionally dominant firms."

"While the release has been celebrated as a milestone in the tech world, it has also rattled some stock markets, especially those dominated by traditional software and data service stocks (Figure 1)."

"The Opus 4.6 model comes with new plug-ins for the ‘Cowork’ assistant that also make it easier to automate tasks in other sectors like legal, finance, sales, marketing and data analysis."

(This article was created with the help of an Artificial Intelligence tool and reviewed by an editor.)