Jason Furman

And with that, we're joined today by Joe Honan.

He's the CEO of Singularity Compute, an AI infrastructure company, and he is the perfect guest to discuss data centers.

Joe, appreciate you making the time.

Thank you.

I think it's critically important.

you know compute and ai infrastructure is is critical infrastructure for any country at this point and particularly if we want to continue to innovate it has to be thought of as a a core critical piece of of the infrastructure both to protect and and to be able to make sure that we have the ability to continue to to build upon what has come before right i think that AI and just in general, the idea of technology, it is the underpinning of our society and we need to treat it as critical infrastructure forever.

On that note, I actually asked our past guest, Harvard professor Jason Furman this question, but I'm sure you have seen on college commencements, speakers being booed by the students when they mention AI, when they mention the need to win this race of computing capacity.

The rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution.

I, I don't know why the economy is so resilient to these predictions of doom, but I'm hoping today's guest does.

Jason Furman is an economist who often does the heavy lifting of answering my most unwieldy economic questions.

Today's unwieldy question is: Why do economic experts keep getting the future wrong? Why is economic commentary so pessimistic? And what does it say about the US economy that reality keeps defying the doomsday forecasts? [upbeat music] I'm Derek Thompson, and this is Plain English.

[upbeat music] This episode is brought to you by Snapdragon.

And, and prices and adjustment are something that we consistently underestimate the importance of, whether it's for events or, in the case of AI, I think for trends.

Let's keep it.

Jason Furman, thank you very much.

[upbeat music]

My economics professors were Larry Summers, who anyone who follows economics knows who Larry Summers is, right? Or Janet Yellen.

or Jason Furman, who was Obama's chief economic advisor.

And so I'm on the economics front, which was my passion and my interest and where I spent most of my elective time.

As far as courses go, I got to, I got to learn macroeconomics from like the central bankers of central bankers.

The problem, for anyone who thinks they are safely on the sidelines, is that AI is now propping up whole chunks of the non-AI economy.

Harvard's Jason Furman calculated that AI-related infrastructure spending accounted for something like 90% of America's economic growth in the first half of last year.

More conservative estimates put it at around a quarter.

Either way, an enormous share of recent economic growth is simply just data center construction.

Mm-hmm.

One is, uh, from an Open to Debate podcast that's, uh, Is Capitalism Broken?, Nick Hanauer and Jason Furman.

Mm-hmm.

And it's like a kind of contrite like capitalist billionaire who's like, "This," You know, "capitalism is bad.

[laughs] Anyway, go ahead.

No, it's, uh...

What I was gonna say is that what struck me about the two videos that I had you watch is how much Chibber actually agreed with Jason Furman, the kind of marginalist neoliberal hack economist policy Democrat guy.

Mm-hmm.

And I feel like there's a kind of analog for that for the global economy, which is that you're only as happy as your happiest bond market, that bond markets seem to be the thing that makes everybody else agitated in the world.

We are joined by a beloved GapFest guest and Harvard economics professor and former chair of the Council of Economic Advisors, that is hard to say, Jason Furman, to discuss the anxiety about bond markets and why they are spooking so many people who seem really smart.

So Jason, like pretend this is Act 10, the class that you teach, if that's still what it's called.

What is the bond market and what is the global trend in the bond market that has so many people anxious briefly?