Megan McCarty Carino

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.

But plenty of people are still uneasy about it, whether it's boosting the economy or not.

We asked Marketplace's Megan McCarty Carina to do a vibe check.

It's hard to keep a classroom full of college students engaged these days.

So Professor Enid Baxter-Rice takes hers outside.

We had class in that tree down there in November.

For 20 years, she's taught cinema and technology at California State University Monterey Bay.

And for a while now, she's noticed some troubling changes in her students as smartphones, social media, and short-form video have become ubiquitous.