America's future could hinge on whether AI slightly disappoints (www.noahpinion.blog)

A growing chorus of analysts argues that the U.S. economy’s surprising resilience may owe more to an AI spending boom than to underlying strength—so much so that a mild slowdown in AI’s promise could tip the country into recession and reshape politics. Estimates cited in the piece suggest GDP growth would be roughly half as strong without AI-related investment, and AI-driven stocks (notably Nvidia, Microsoft and Apple) now account for an outsized share of market gains. If AI is effectively the economy’s single pillar, a sectoral bust could cascade through employment, corporate credit and markets, flipping the political narrative around the current administration. For the AI/ML community the warning is both technical and financial: this isn’t just a speculative stock bubble but an “industrial bubble” driven by misjudged technological payoff. Key red flags include massive data-center buildouts and electricity demands, bank exposure from loans to AI projects, studies showing little measurable ROI (MIT found 95% of organizations report no return), research describing low-quality “workslop” from AI-assisted output, and signs of diminishing returns from scaling models. The practical implication is clear: modest underperformance—rather than outright failure—could trigger severe economic fallout. That raises the stakes for demonstrating real productivity gains, energy-efficient deployments, and robust business models beyond hype.