The corporate build-up to fuel artificial intelligence is immense, especially in proportion to the rest of the American economy and in terms of historical perspective. The numbers in a recent Wall Street Journal piece, especially as interpreted by Josh Marshall at TPM, are pretty scary.
WSJ contends that the annual infrastructure spending for AI (mostly data centers) as a percentage of the Gross National Product is higher than it was for the building of the railroads in the 19th century, and twice as high as for the largest infrastructure project of my lifetime, the federal highway program of the 1950s into the 1970s.
"The AI build-out is on track to become the biggest economic bet in U.S. history, dwarfing the investments made to fund other huge U.S. infrastructure projects such as the railroads, the highway system and the plumbing for the internet," said WSJ.
Meanwhile, writes Marshall: "And by many measures the entire economy is now dominated by AI spending. Not only is the non-AI economy doing pretty poorly, at least showing less spending than before. But to a great degree that’s because AI spending is crowded out other spending and driving up prices. (If you’ve tried to buy a computer or computer memory recently you knows this.)"
History shows there was a lot of speculation and some investment bubbles involved in the railroads etc. but I think AI is more speculative (in several senses) and more like investment bubbles of the recent past than, say, building highways. Everybody knew what highways were for. Nobody is really sure what AI is for. Everybody knew that highways were going to work--they were better roads for the existing technology of motor vehicles. Nobody knows if AI is going to work, at least for the intended purposes that are supposed to lead to somebody making lots of money.
But while this boom is stealing resources and raising prices throughout the economy, two enormous potential barriers have suddenly appeared. There is the rogue abilities and actions of several advanced AI programs that are scaring even the people who develop them, so much so that they are calling for limits. And there is the suddenly important opposition to this building of immense data centers out there in the electorate just weeks before elections.
Moreover this opposition is just about the only issue that is bringing America together. There is no ideological or political split--all kinds of people in every circumstance and every state are making their opposition known to local governments, media and focus groups. Some races, like the Senate race in Ohio, may turn on how powerful this movement turns out to be.
If the AI boom simply slows down, it may eventually be good for the economy. But that's not how things usually work in America these days. We've become an all or nothing nation, and the stock market can go that way too. For the sake of his personal investments and his family business, Boss Chaos is currently supporting AI expansion, but opposition is growing within his own party.
The stakes are much higher than they should be. The rule of Chaos has roiled the rest of the economy, so that almost all the economy's growth and health are due to AI investment. In other words, the US economy is artificially maintained by AI, which is an artificially unintelligent way to run a railroad.
