Recently the New York Times reported the following:
The A.I. Boom Is Driving the Economy. What Happens if It
Falters? (1/3)
A windfall for companies that build data centers and
their suppliers is overshadowing weakness in other industries.
By Ben Casselman and Sydney Ember
Nov. 22, 2025, 5:01 a.m. ET
In Nevada, a summer of weak international tourism has
stunted hiring and weakened the local economy. But a data-center construction
boom tied to the fast-growing artificial intelligence industry has helped to
soften the blow.
In the Washington D.C., area, federal job cuts and the longest government shutdown on record have threatened to push the regional economy into a recession. But there, too, A.I.-related investments are helping to offset the damage.
The U.S. economy in 2025 is split in two: Everything tied to artificial intelligence is booming. Just about everything else is not.
A.I. developers and chipmakers are raking in hundreds of billions of dollars in investments. Data centers the size of theme parks are sprouting around the country. Utilities are racing to build new power plants and to bring old ones out of retirement to meet surging electrical demand. Workers with the right skills — from the developers building A.I. models to the electricians wiring the facilities that run them — are commanding premium salaries.
In the rest of the economy, the picture is different. Unemployment has risen, hiring has slowed and industries including manufacturing and home building are cutting jobs. Consumer sentiment has slumped amid high prices. The public sector has been weighed down by budget cuts and federal layoffs. Tariffs, and the uncertainty surrounding them, have been a drag on international trade and led to slower investment by many companies.
“It’s a two-track economy,” said Mark Muro, an economist at the Brookings Institution who has studied the effect of A.I. on local economies. “This A.I. gold rush is generating all the excitement and papering over a drift in the rest of the economy.”
By one measure, investments in computer equipment and software accounted for more than 90 percent of growth in gross domestic product in the first half of the year. And while economists caution against taking those numbers at face value — if it weren’t for A.I., some of those dollars would have flowed elsewhere — they say there is no doubt that A.I. investments help explain the economy’s surprising resilience this year.
But reliance on A.I. as a source of growth poses a question for the economy: What happens if the gold rush stops?
That threat is most obvious in the stock market, which has
set record after record in recent months largely on the strength of a handful
of A.I.-focused companies. Seven companies, including Amazon, Microsoft and
Alphabet, the parent company of Google, now make up well over a third of the
value of the S&P 500 index. Just one of the so-called Magnificent Seven,
Nvidia, which makes the chips that power many of the most advanced large
language models, recently, though briefly, topped $5 trillion in market value.
Such lofty valuations are predicated on assumptions that recent rapid growth will continue for years, which some investors have warned could prove unrealistic. Even Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, said in August that he thought investors were too excited about A.I. A strong quarterly earnings report from Nvidia on Wednesday failed to fully calm those doubts.
A bursting of the bubble — whenever it happens — could have real-world implications. Consumer spending in recent quarters has been increasingly driven by high-income households, who have continued to shop even as many lower-income families have pulled back. But if the stock market stumbles, wealthy households, too, might pare down their spending.
“If spending growth is being dominated by households that have benefited significantly from the performance of A.I.-related names in the stock market, then an equity sell-off could be really quite painful for the economy,” said Aditya Bhave, a U.S. economist at Bank of America. “That does create a degree of fragility.”
(to be continued)
Translation
人工智能熱潮正在推動經濟發展。如果它失敗會怎樣？ （1/3）
數據中心建設公司及其供應商獲得的意外之財掩蓋了其他行業的疲軟。
在內華達州，夏季國際旅遊業的疲軟抑制了招聘，削弱了當地經濟。但與快速發展的人工智能產業相關的數據中心建設熱潮幫助緩解了這一衝擊。
在華盛頓特區地區，聯邦政府裁員和有史以來持續時間最長的政府停擺威脅著該地區的經濟，使其陷入衰退。但在那裡，與人工智能相關的投資也在幫助抵消損失。
在北達科他州，低油價導致鑽井平台停工，並削弱了州財政收入，但人工智能數據中心正在幫助填補這一缺口。
2025年的美國經濟將呈現兩極化：所有與人工智能相關的產業都在蓬勃發展，而其他產業則幾乎一片蕭條。
人工智能開發商和晶片製造商正忙於賺取數千億美元的投資。規模堪比主題樂園般大的數據中心在全國各地如雨後春筍般湧現。公用事業公司競相建造新的發電廠，並讓舊的發電廠重新投入使用，以滿足激增的電力需求。擁有相關技能的從業人員 - 從建立人工智能模型的開發人員到負責設施佈線去運行這些模型的電工 - 都獲得了豐厚的薪酬。
而在其他經濟領域，情況則截然不同。失業率上升，招聘放緩，包括製造業和房屋建築業在內的行業正在裁員。高物價導致消費者信心低迷。公共部門因預算削減和聯邦政府裁員而舉步維艱。關稅及其帶來的不確定性阻礙了國際貿易，並導致許多公司放緩了投資步伐。
曾研究過人工智能對地方經濟的影響的布魯金斯學會經濟學家Mark Muro說道:「這是一個雙軌制經濟」; 「這場人工智能淘金熱吸引了所有人的目光，掩蓋了經濟其他領域的下滑」。
根據一項統計，今年上半年，電腦設備和軟體投資佔國內生產毛額成長的90%以上。儘管經濟學家告誡人們不要輕信這些數字的表面意義 - 如果沒有人工智能，其中一部分資金就會流向其他領域 - 但他們表示，毫無疑問，人工智能投資有助於解釋今年經濟令人驚訝的韌性。
然而，依賴人工智能作為成長動力為經濟帶來了一個問題：如果這股淘金熱停止了，會發生什麼事？
這種威脅在股市上最為明顯，近幾個月來，股市屢創新高，這主要得益於少數幾家專注於人工智能的公司表現強勁。包括亞馬遜、微軟和Google母公司Alphabet在內的七家公司，如今佔據了標普500指數市值的三分之一以上。這七家公司中，僅英偉達一家 - 其晶片為許多最先進的大型語言模型提供動力 - 市值近期就曾短暫突破5萬億美元大關。
如此過高的估值是基於這樣的假設：近期的快速成長將持續數年。然而，一些投資者警告稱，這種假設可能並不現實。就連OpenAI的執行長Sam Altman也在8月表示，他認為投資人對人工智能過於樂觀。英偉達週三發佈的強勁季度財報也未能完全消除這些疑慮。
泡沫破裂 - 無論何時發生 - 都可能對現實世界產生影響。近幾個季度，消費支出越來越受到高收入家庭的推動，即使許多低收入家庭縮減了開支，高收入家庭仍繼續消費。但如果股市下跌，富裕家庭也可能減少支出。
美國銀行經濟學家Aditya
Bhave表示：“如果消費成長主要由那些從人工智能相關股票市場表現中顯著地獲益的家庭推動，那麼股市拋售可能會對經濟造成相當大的衝擊”; “這確實構成一定程度的脆弱性。”
（待續）
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