Kai Risdahl

Okay, so they call it artificial intelligence, but the AI economy is very, very real.

From American Public Media, this is Marketplace.

In Los Angeles, I'm Kai Risdell.

It is Tuesday today, January 27th.

Good as always to have you along, everybody.

We're going to spend the program today recapping a quick trip I took a couple of weeks ago.

Thank you very much.

That's Marketplace's Megan McCarty Carino.

You hear her here and you hear her on Marketplace Tech.

She was my ride at the airport up in San Jose.

Tell me why I'm here.

Maybe get on a plane at like 8 o'clock this morning.

Fair enough.

We started our series the other day trying to figure out whether AI is getting too big to fail because there is massive spending happening, massive borrowing, too, to finance the data center boom.

I went to one in L.A.

Megan talked to people about their not so good feelings about our AI future and the tradeoffs that come with it.

But the thing is, the AI future is already happening in Silicon Valley.

There's a lot going on here.

There's data centers.

There's energy.