Goldman Sachs says AI’s impact on the US economy was “basically zero” last year

https://www.techspot.com/news/111440-goldman-sachs-ai-impact-us-economy-basically-zero.html

25 Comments

  1. Well, not exactly. nvidia made lots of money selling the idea that everyone needs AI. The impact of that was offset by the lost of jobs because they were replaced by AI.

  2. Getting paid for having no substance on what you utter coz anyway they’ll believe what your sputter

    s

  3. CircumspectCapybara on

    > Some analysts argue that
    >
    > […]
    >
    > analysts have suggested

    These are the same “experts” and “analysts” that have predicted 20 out of the last 2 recessions, so you should take their analyses with a grain of salt.

    Watch what they do, not what they say. If they decide to throw their own money behind shorting tech stocks or otherwise bet against AI with their own funds, then you can believe they actually have a shred of confidence in what they otherwise say for clicks.

  4. All_Hail_Hynotoad on

    No positive impact, perhaps. Many people lost their jobs because of AI, or so they were told.

  5. the_red_scimitar on

    Well – not zero. That’s manifestly false. Hundreds of billions were spent. If nothing else, that took investment from other productive things (you know, like memory chips for any other use, hard drives, etc.) It created scarcities of these stapes of the tech trade, raised prices for billions of users, etc.

    So if the NET effect was zero, it might mean:

    – It hides negative effects on the economy

    – it hides positive effects on the economy

    Probably both. That huge investment capital *didn’t* go to more useful, productive, or even remunerative efforts. Concentrating it in one highly speculative industry kept it from all the rest, and had global impact on technology availability. But it also fueled a literal ton of “commerce” (if nothing else, lots of cash flow). Stories continue to basically say, “almost no user is winning with this, but everybody is using it”. The continuing warnings about the immense bubble this creates being risky and fragile, not to mention the technology itself having profound dangers that even the industries leading CEOs are begging to be reigned in (but want others – governments – to regulate them because they can’t self-regulate) are all over the news.

    And yet, we continue handling this like some kind of shiny toy, while the US regime tries to force them to abandon what ethical standards they have, and undoubtedly others, seeing the large, flashing dollar signs, are urgently realizing the full potential dangers of the technology.

    So “zero” is hardly the right word for the effect of the technology, unless you blind yourself to the enormous effect that moving that much money has on the world.

  6. Goldman Sachs clearly needs to adopt new metrics for assessing the US economy because anyone can easily say this statement is false. Job layoffs hand over fist and massive shifting of stock portfolios is a direct result of AI implementation and adoption.

  7. OptimisticSkeleton on

    Let’s keep a record of every CEO and business leader who said AI was gonna make a ton of money and never listen to them again.

  8. But hey at least we drained rivers of clean drinking water dry so that we can sling slop at each other that takes longer to fix than to just write normally.

  9. It was probably a negative impact except for some manufacturers. And none of them make things in the US

  10. I bet if they look harder they’ll see it’s actually negative, since many people who would be spending couldn’t get jobs

  11. So long as we rely on the same fundamental energy systems, we cannot make any real progress as a species. 2025 had more emissions than any year prior lol

  12. I mean, the extra energy usage, the water usage, the cost of RAM blowing up, outages because of AI generated code, probably some lost jobs….but sure no impact.

  13. Prodding_The_Line on

    Clearly lives under a rock as RAMpocalypse happened! They need to “sack” these people.

  14. No impact except for the fact that it’s become arguably one of the central pillars of the economy, to the point that if it collapses as a viable sector that it would be a complete disaster.

  15. This article is saying that the idea that all of the spending on AI is boosting US GDP is wrong.

    (This article is not about AI productivity).

    It it simply saying that the spending US tech companies are doing on AI is actually boosting GDP in Taiwan and Korea. 

    The analyst from Goldman here did not set out to comment on AIs impact so far on productivity in workplaces. That is a different question. This is about investment in AI and where that boost is being seen in GDP. 

    The U.S. is essentially acting as a pass-through for capital that is actually boosting the GDP of East Asian manufacturing hubs.

  16. redvelvetcake42 on

    AI is going to be a thing that settles into mid territory. Gemini will dominate and other options like CopilotAI and Claude will survive. I don’t think OpenAI survives or it gets solid to Microsoft (brand wise) and they switch to chatgpt instead of copilot since copilot is a joke and Chatgpt isn’t.

  17. Who could’ve guessed that a technology nobody asked for that constantly hallucinates false information being shoved down our throats by middle management so they can report “increased AI engagement” and get a fat bonus wouldn’t actually increase productivity?