The US economy is pumped up on tech-bro vanity. The inevitable correction must prompt a global conversation about intelligent machines, regulation and risk
If AI did not change your life in 2025, next year it will. That is one of few forecasts that can be made with confidence in unpredictable times. This is not an invitation to believe the hype about what the technology can do today, or may one day achieve. The hype doesn’t need your credence. It is puffed up enough on Silicon Valley finance to distort the global economy and fuel geopolitical rivalries, shaping your world regardless of whether the most fanciful claims about AI capability are ever realised.
ChatGPT was launched just over three years ago and became the fastest-growing consumer app in history. Now it has about 800m weekly users. Its parent company, OpenAI, is valued at about $500bn. Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, has negotiated an intricate and, to some eyes, suspiciously opaque network of deals with other players in the sector to build the infrastructure required for the US’s AI-powered future. The value of these commitments is about $1.5tn. This is not real cash, but bear in mind that a person spending $1 every second would need 31,700 years to get through a trillion-dollar stash.
Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist
