Jason Furman

Every college student I talk to is either terrified about AI, thrilled about AI, or often some combination of the two.

So far, it doesn't appear to have taken a lot of jobs.

And so far, it doesn't appear to be showing up very much

in productivity growth.

In fact, the main way it's showing up in the jobs numbers is the people being hired to build data centers to run these models.

But I do think that that's going to change in the coming years.

And just really big question that no one knows the answer to is to what degree does it compliment people's skills and enable them to be better workers and paid more?

or substitute for those skills and lead them to be more dispensable and paid less.

Historically, technology was much more about complementing and raising wages.

I'd place a soft bet on that for AI too, but with a huge amount of uncertainty and a certain amount of dread about the downside here.

Yeah, look, I mean, we'd said that the economy is getting better for most people.

The question, though, is would it be doing even better but for President Trump?

And when it comes to the tariffs, I think that is certainly true.

Prices are probably about a half a point higher.

maybe even a percent higher than they otherwise would be because of the tariffs.

Economic growth would be even better were it not for the tariffs.

And in some sense, I think the president understands this because when it comes to certain politically sensitive ideas, he's taken the tariffs off of it.

You know, things like coffee, he's taken the tariffs off.

He's tried to reduce them on other countries.

He's delayed some of the tariffs on furniture.