As AI rapidly reshapes how we live and work, McKinsey Health Institute (MHI), in collaboration with the World Economic Forum, set out to shift the conversation from what technology can do to what people need to thrive alongside it.
The Human Advantage: Stronger brains in the age of AI makes the case for investing in brain capital—the combination of brain health and the cognitive, interpersonal, self-leadership, and technological literacy skills that enable people to adapt and contribute.
The ambition was to elevate brain capital from an underrecognized health issue into a global societal and economic imperative—and provide leaders across sectors with an actionable path forward.
MHI translated a complex body of health, workforce, economic, and scientific evidence into a clear framework for action.
The report demonstrates both the human and economic stakes: scaling cost-effective interventions for brain health conditions could avert 267 million disability-adjusted life years globally by 2050 while generating up to $6.2 trillion in cumulative GDP gains.
Drawing on a year of global convenings and dialogues facilitated through the World Economic Forum's Brain Economy Action Forum, the report moves from evidence to action through five levers:
Together, they offer governments, employers, educators, investors, and communities a shared language and road map for strengthening human potential in the age of AI.
The report has helped bring the concept of brain capital into a rapidly expanding global conversation.
Since publication, it has generated:
Impact is demonstrated through independent indicators of how the work and its central idea traveled beyond McKinsey’s own channels: earned attention, external reproduction, backlinks, search visibility, and growing interest in brain capital.
Most importantly, the report has helped make a new proposition more visible at a pivotal moment: In the age of artificial intelligence, investing in human intelligence—and the health and skills that sustain it—is not only a health priority. It is an economic and societal imperative.
