Six-Chart Sunday – The U.S. of AI

6 Infographics + 1 Video (Keach Hagey on “Sam Altman, OpenAI & the Race to Invent the Future”)

AI is everywhere. AI is everything.

It’s getting impossible to read about any topic these days without the discussion turning to artificial intelligence... AI investment, AI policies, AI risk, AI opportunity. Some of this is media bias towards hype… what makes readers click, engage, share. More may reflect reality: AI is rapidly changing how we work, live, play, learn, parent, fight & create.

Believe the Hype

While I’m reflexively suspicious of anything portrayed as the “most important discovery in human history” (Larry Ellison), “more profound than electricity or fire” (Sundar Pichai), an innovation that “will save the world” (Marc Andreessen) with a future “so bright that no one can do it justice by trying to write about it now” (Sam Altman), we may look back in a decade & realize AI indeed changed everything.

1. Market Momentum & Historic Wealth Creation

While many worry about AI’s broader implications, few AI investors are complaining. Since the launch of ChatGPT, the AI-company-heavy NASDAQ 100 is up over 500%, more than twice the S&P 500 return and ~10x emerging markets (MUFG). Potential mega-POs this year for AI leaders OpenAI & Anthropic could fuel further out-performance, with famed economist Nouriel Roubani seeing more growth ahead thanks to AI. Per Bloomberg:

[Roubani] — who rose to prominence for correctly predicting the 2008 financial crisis — is now betting that artificial intelligence will anchor a new era of US exceptionalism, lifting economic growth to as high as 4% by the end of the decade. Productivity is already accelerating and the gains from AI, he argues, could outweigh the combined drag of tariffs, fiscal risks and geopolitical shocks by a four-to-one ratio.

2. 2026 = The AI Election?

While elections rarely turn on questions of tech policy, AI could impact the 2026 midterms in three significant ways. First, influence campaigns (by candidates, parties, superPACs & foreign governments) are leveraging AI to shape messaging & operations. Second, new pro-and-anti-AI superPACs plan to spend hundreds of millions on 2026 electioneering. Third, “affordability” concerns will play a central role in shaping the 2026 midterms, with politicians in both parties — at the national, state & local levels — increasingly blaming AI data centers & big tech “hyper-scalers” for higher electricity costs. (See comments this week by President Trump & Microsoft).

3. U.S. Lawmakers Want In

Legislators are quick to perceive popular trends, jumping on bandwagons or in front of rapidly-evolving markets in attempt to accelerate, shape and/or control them. Legislation mentioning “AI” or “artificial intelligence” has gone parabolic in recent years (n.b. this is introduced laws… many fewer passed!)

4. Believing ≠ Trusting

Politicians are eager to legislate on AI both because of its potential impact on society— after all they do swear an oath to “establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty” — and also because citizens around the world are increasingly concerned about AI, especially in the U.S.

5. AI & Jobs / Employment

While everyone focuses on inflation / affordability, another AI-adjacent issue that could emerge in the midterms is jobs & employment. Per Joseph Politano’s “The No Hire Economy”:

“Today’s labor market is perhaps most reminiscent of the “jobless recovery” that characterized the early 1990s or mid-2000s, where employment rates remained stagnant even as overall economic growth had already rebounded. The nearly three-year period from February 2023 to the present is the longest time since those previous “jobless recoveries” where employment rates for prime-age workers have stayed within a one percentage point range, never declining below 80.4% and never rising above 80.9%—despite a more-than-7% increase in US GDP over the same timeframe.

While significant data show that AI is not yet causing significant layoffs, many prophecize mass unemployment due to AI over time while others suggest AI may explain businesses’ current reluctance to hire.

6. AI May Save Your Life

I remain optimistic. One reason — in their 2026 “health care outlook,” Pitchbook analysts foresee revolutionary advancements in drug discovery & hope for slowing or even reversing systemic health care costs:

“We believe AI-driven advancements in drug discovery will nearly double Investigational New Drug application success rates going forward, all while reducing development timelines and costs… Beyond drug discovery, AI is expected to continue reducing physician administrative hours in 2026, along with the accompanying burnout, thereby extending the careers of physicians… [2026 may even] be the year when AI begins to reverse the exponential expansion of the administrative state in healthcare—an endemic that began in 1966.”

SO WHAT: Just because something is over-hyped doesn’t mean it’s not real. Best advice = Don’t ignore AI or wait for other people to show you what it means and tell you what to do. Experiment yourself. Kick the tires. Imagine impacts on and possibilities for your own work & customers. What might your competitors do? Don’t overreact, fire all employees or change everything without a clear strategy. Finally, consider the impact of government responses to the disruptions to come… AI policy debates are everywhere, intense and accelerating.

VIDEO

Wall Street Journal reporter Keach Hagey covers business & AI and recently published the definitive biography of Sam Altman, Open AI and the inventors and investors racing to dominate artificial intelligence. We discussed her book last week: