A new economic indicator has captivated Silicon Valley, Wall Street and Washington. It’s clear that the huge spending on AI is adding to the U.S. economy, but the available economic data doesn’t neatly capture its effects. He calculates that AI-related spending contributed about 0.2 percentage points to the 2.2 percent U.S. economic growth last year. It’s more difficult to measure what, if anything, business and consumer use of AI is doing to economic growth. On Friday, after the release of a government estimate of economic growth for all of 2025, Rubinton said her analysis broadly stood.

Source: Washington Post February 23, 2026 16:01 UTC