White collar jobs are stuck in place. Labor growth is sluggish. How much of this is from the effect of AI-related productivity isn’t clear. Wall Street Week had a worthwhile discussion last month.
One casualty of AI is the tech site Stack Overflow.
https://boingboing.net/2026/01/14/stack-overflow-is-dead-and-its-toxic-community-helped-kill-it.html
The AI gold rush is literally tearing up acreage across the country.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/01/14/1131253/data-centers-are-amazing-everyone-hates-them/
Do all of the companies competing for AI supremacy really need to invest so much money in those data centers?
The solid-state drives in those data centers have undeniable advantages over hard disk drives. Yet they can consume as much, or more, electricity than the old mechanical disks.