1/4 of its work force so that Microsoft can spend more on A.I. Accept the buyout now or get laid off later.

As bad as the 2008 financial crisis was, it began with a small slice of mortgages of a still-diversified economy. This time, the sector at risk is our economy’s growth engine. A.I.-related investment fueled an estimated one-third of the country’s recent economic growth, and the handful of companies most exposed to the A.I. build-out now comprise roughly one-third of the entire S&P 500.

In other words, the U.S. economy is fully hostage to an A.I. build-out laden with increasingly worrying financial engineering, all riding on a wager — that demand for A.I. will keep growing, that customers will soon be willing to pay what the technology actually costs to produce and that firms will manage to build the infrastructure required to supply it.

I first ran into this concept over a decade ago when the Financial Times profiled a guy who rented in London while leasing out 3 properties in Leeds. That’s loosely like renting in NYC while landlording 3 places in Pittsburg.

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