Tech titan Google believes that artificial intelligence (AI) will trigger a massive creation of wealth that would help the US wrestle with its sky-high debt level.
In a speech at Jackson Hole, Alphabet president and chief investment officer Ruth Porat says AI is no longer a side story but a powerful engine that could catalyze colossal wealth generation in the coming years.
“[AI can] drive economic growth, potentially in the trillions of dollars globally in the next 10 years.”
Porat says the scale of the opportunity is extraordinary, even if the estimates vary. Citing data from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the Google executive says a modest productivity lift from AI rewrites the trajectory of America’s $37 trillion national debt.
“If AI could boost productivity growth by 50 basis points per year compared to the CBO baseline, the long-term debt to GDP ratio would reach a still-high but more manageable level.”
Porat positions finance as one of the industries with the most to gain amid the AI-driven tech boom. She calls the industry a data-dense sector where machine learning can unlock outcomes “beyond what humans can do without this assist.”
To emphasize the point, she leans on Google’s own playbook. Porat says the company applies the same AI breakthroughs used in health care and cybersecurity to financial data, framing Wall Street as the next arena where early detection and pattern recognition will decide winners and losers.
“Across industries, early detection is risk management.
In finance, you are dealing with mountains of transactional data, risk models, compliance rules, market signals. AI gives you the power to cut through the noise, detect patterns, and make smarter decisions faster.”