Megan McCarty Carino

I'm Mitchell Hartman for Marketplace.

Wall Street today, all three major indices moved higher, perhaps expecting good things as big tech companies start reporting profits later this week.

Speaking of momentum, as Mitchell was, we will have the details when we do the numbers.

Don't look now, but we were graced with some more shutdown-delayed government economic data today.

Durable goods orders for November this time.

That is orders for big, expensive things meant to last three years or more.

Your machinery, your airplanes, too.

They were way up in, again, it was November.

But is this a blip or more significant?

Marketplace's Nancy Marshall Genza reports.

Here's a not-so-random fact about artificial intelligence in the U.S.

economy.

It comes to us from the Federal Reserve Bank of St.

Louis.

AI in all its components, software, equipment, R&D, and last but not least, all those data centers that are being built, added just shy of one percentage point to gross domestic product in the first three quarters of last year.

Now, one percent does not sound like a whole lot, I know, but in a $31 trillion economy...

That is real money.

So, of course, Americans are thrilled with this new technology that is upon us, right?

Well, not exactly.

Generative AI has, yes, been adopted at a dizzying pace.