The Human Component as a Determining Factor of Labor Productivity in the Digital Economy

Abstract—: The article provides evidence that most of the cognitive work in the digital age will continue to be reserved for human labor, since this kind of work can generally be fragmented into nonprogrammable tasks (50–75%), the solution of which requires human creative work, and routine programmable tasks that can be solved by intelligent machines (IMs). The authors propose a mathematical model for calculating labor productivity in the digital economy, characterized by widespread “human+IM” symbiosis. The calculations performed on the proposed model demonstrate that: 1) the human+IM symbiosis uses digital technologies to realize potential opportunities of increasing labor productivity in the economy; 2) the highest level of labor productivity is achieved if human labor prevails in the human+IM symbiosis, while the lowest level of labor productivity is observed if the share of programmable IM-performed work prevails; 3) in developed countries labor productivity of 3% per year can be achieved by the mid-2020s, and this level can be retained until the 2040s. © 2021, Pleiades Publishing, Ltd.