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The AI Boom Is Transforming the American Economy Beyond Recognition by Justin Lahart

AI has rapidly become a huge economic factor while affecting everything from capital investment to how much you pay for an iPhone. The U.S. economy keeps putting more eggs in the artificial-intelligence basket.  Oxford’s Michael Pearce estimates that AI investment alone has been behind nearly a quarter of the growth in gross domestic product recently. The AI-boosted stock market is the other big source of support. In the first quarter, U.S. household net worth reached $174 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve, an increase of $13 trillion from a year earlier that was mostly due to stock gains. Since then, the broad S&P 1500 index has risen by about 15%, so net worth is likely trillions of dollars higher now. Those gains have been driven in large part by enthusiasm for AI. When people’s net worth increases, they spend more freely. Estimates of these wealth effects vary, but economists generally think that for every dollar in stock-market wealth gained, people spend a few cents more. The AI Boom Is Transforming the American Economy Beyond Recognition – WSJ

Larry Ellison Bet It All on the A.I. Boom. Will He Be the Face of the A.I. Bubble?

Inside the 81-year-old billionaire’s risky, debt-fueled scramble to transform his data empire into an A.I. juggernaut. The president announced “the largest A.I. infrastructure project by far in history” and told the world that his friend Larry Ellison was just the man to get it done. “He’s sort of C.E.O. of everything,” Trump said. Ellison began by thanking Trump. “We certainly couldn’t do this without you,” he said. “It would simply be impossible.” He then proceeded to sketch out the ambitious plan. Ellison’s database software and cloud computing company, Oracle, and its partners — most prominently OpenAI — were going to invest as much as $500 billion over the next four years into a group of sprawling data centers, 500,000 square feet each, that would produce 10 gigawatts of computing power, using enough energy to power as many as 10 million homes. It was called Project Stargate, after the 1994 sci-fi movie. The effort began in late 2022 when the launch of ChatGPT stunned the world and set in motion a race to master and control the most transformative new technology since the birth of the internet. Analysts began bidding up how much generative A.I. would add to the global economy: $7 trillion over 10 years, $200 trillion by 2030and so on. Larry Ellison Bet It All on the A.I. Boom. Will He Be the Face of the A.I. Bubble? – The New York Times

AI Boom to Drive Data Center Electricity Demand to 20% of US Total by 2035

Data centers in the US are projected to consume 20% of the nation’s electricity by 2035, a significant rise from 5.9% this year. The increase reflects a dramatic surge in energy demand, particularly in states like Virginia and Texas, where data centers are heavily clustered. BloombergNEF forecasts data center power requirements will reach 194 gigawatts, underscoring the sector’s escalating impact on national power consumption over the next decade. AI Boom to Drive Data Center Electricity Demand to 20% of US Total by 2035 – Bloomberg

Interesting: The Three Pillars of Independence of an Organization

The 3 Pillars of Independence most commonly refers to a framework from the UK voluntary sector (specifically promoted by organizations like Bond and the Directory of Social Change). It is a toolkit for assessing and maintaining the independence of charities, NGOs, or civil society organizations.

The Three Pillars are:

  1. Independent of Party Politics – The organization (or regulator) must remain free from bias or influence by any political party or the government of the day. Decisions should be impartial, not favoring one political side.
  2. Independent of Populism – It should not be swayed by popular public opinion, media-driven campaigns, or transient public pressure, especially on controversial or unpopular causes.
  3. Independent of the Press – Freedom from media influence or pressure, ensuring decisions are based on evidence and law rather than headlines or public narratives.

This toolkit was created to monitor potential political encroachment on charitable regulation and to ensure charities can operate without undue external interference.

 

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