🔮 Look up, the curve turned #601
On the economy, Navier–Stokes & safety concerns
On September 6th, I find myself allowing for the cliché that nothing happens for decades. However, I firmly believe the curve of AI turned upwards, challenging many of our prior assumptions during this week. It's reminiscent of how, in March 2020, only a handful of countries were in lockdown, and by the end of the month, over a hundred were.
The past few weeks have been a whirlwind of events, leaving me in utter chaos. In an attempt to make sense of it all, I've compiled my thoughts on the most significant developments and their implications.
To gauge the impact of AI, I recently spoke with 250 IT executives in Las Vegas. When asked about the progress of their AI initiatives, the majority – approximately 95% – reported having serious and meaningful results. They also expressed plans to allocate more resources to AI in the coming year compared to this year. The experiences of these firms varied, ranging from an American institution that has entirely transitioned to open-weight models to a hospital that utilizes a combination of OpenAI and Anthropic models.
The qualitative signal is evident, and it's not surprising that our latest revenue numbers show AI revenue growing faster in August than in July, and even faster in July than in June. I am not alone in witnessing this surge in demand. According to Bloomberg, Microsoft has plans to increase its capacity to serve AI from approximately 2 GW today to nearly 13 GW by 2032, as part of a fleet expanding from 12 GW to 38 GW. This 26 GW of new capacity suggests that they anticipate demand they currently cannot serve.
Anthropic released a helpful set of scenarios for what further AI adoption might mean for the economy. Our models align more closely with Anthropic's "substantial scenario," where AI could add about 8.3% to US GDP by 2030. This impact is initially slightly lower than the Internet's at its peak before rapidly accelerating. The economic shift is characterized by a change from labor to capital, a modern version of Engels' Pause, and an increase in unemployment, primarily affecting knowledge workers.
Written by urgent.news from Exponential View's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
