$2.5tn is about 8% of U.S. GDP. So a handful of AI firms really expect that they will become larger than the entire U.S. sectors of manufacturing, government, or healthcare?
Investors expect that they will, I guess. If you really believe the strong ai use cases (like exponential improvements, or it replacing hundreds of knowledge workers at every company" then maybe this isn't unreasonable.
1) people like me exist: I don't live in the USA, yet it is possible for me to buy things which are made in the USA
2) fiat money is only created or deleted by laws the government controls (plus a tiny quantity from forgery and damage to coins and notes), so everyone losing their jobs doesn't make the money disappear, just who has it available to spend
3) previous waves of automation have created new business opportunities; while this has not been too good for the people who lost jobs to the automation, it has generally boosted the overall economies this happened in, so it is absolutely possible to wipe out tech employees without it seriously harming consumers collectively
If you look at recent trends in consumer spending, a lot more of it is from the upper classes and less from the middle. Selling services to the rich can displace the loss of white collar workers. (in theory). as a bonus, ideally you create some more really wealthy people to spend on things during this shift.
I'm yet to see what part of AI really wealthy people would like to spend their money on. It's not like we can get AI Yachts and AI Rockets. What would the premium product for the upper class be?
I guess the bet is that they will become embedded in basically 8% of the tasks in every sector. which I guess could happen long term? thinking about the whole ass economy in this way always make my mind boggle so I don't really feel equipped to talk intelligently about this.
I suspect that they believe they can integrate with a substantial portion of not just the US economy, but also most of the European and formal Latin America economies. And I also suspect that the number is quite high because there are so many AI companies planning to snag like 80% market share for AI.