By Sergio Goncalves

LISBON (Reuters) – Portugal must retrain 1.3 million workers, or around 30% of its employed population, to work with generative artificial intelligence in order to close the productivity gap with the European Union’s average by 2030, a study showed on Monday.

Low productivity has long been Portugal’s Achilles’ heel, with productivity gains contributing, on average, just 0.6% to compound annual GDP growth between 2010 and 2022, less than half the EU average of 1.3%.

The study released by consulting firm McKinsey points to a potential sharp increase in that contribution to 3.1% by 2030, in line with the projected EU’s average then, if the country quickly adopted automation and generative AI technologies, priming its workforce for the change.

Generative AI learns how to take actions from past data and creates new content – a text, an image, or computer code – based on that training, instead of simply categorising or identifying data like other AI.

“It is a unique opportunity for the country to compete directly with the developed economies of the world in terms of growth,” McKinsey senior partner Duarte Begonha said.

In addition to the 1.3 million workers in need of new technological and social skills, it will be necessary to shift some 320,000 people working in roles such as customer service or administrative support to new jobs, and for the public, private and the education sector to work closely together.

“The big investment will be in changing processes, procedures and ways of working,” he said, explaining that for every euro invested in generative AI technologies it will be necessary to invest 3 euros in managing the change in organisations.

(Reporting by Sergio Goncalves; Editing by Alison Williams)