A recent White House paper titled "Artificial Intelligence and the Great Divergence" draws parallels between the impact of the industrial revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries and the current era, where artificial intelligence (AI) is set to shape global economies.

Investments and GDP Growth

AI is now a central element of the United States' economic strategy, representing a significant share of the national economic activity, particularly through the construction of data centers. According to the paper, AI investments increased the US GDP by 1.3% in the first half of 2025, an impact comparable to investments in the railway network during the industrial revolution.

Productivity and Future Scenarios

The report estimates that long-term growth depends primarily on productivity gains, and sees AI as the tool to achieve these goals. Several estimates are presented on the impact of AI on GDP, from single-digit increases to a 20% productivity growth within a decade. More extreme scenarios are also hypothesized, with GDP growth exceeding 45% due to the replacement of human labor with AI in the long term.

Infrastructure and Computational Capacity

US economic growth is mainly driven by the deployment of capital for the construction of AI infrastructure, rather than by increased consumption or public spending. Investments in data processing equipment, buildings, infrastructure, and software increased by 28% in early 2025, and AI-related infrastructure accounted for about a quarter of all US investments in 2025.

The compute capacity used by AI models has quadrupled every year since 2010, and the length of tasks that AI systems can complete has doubled every seven months for six years. The cost per token of AI output has decreased by factors ranging from nine to nine hundred per year, depending on the task and model.

AI Adoption

By the end of 2025, approximately 78% of organizations reported using AI, compared to 55% in 2024, and it is estimated that 40% of US workers use generative AI in their jobs. Nearly half of US businesses now pay for AI subscriptions. The report presents these data as evidence that AI has moved from the experimentation phase to routine production.

Global Economic Divergence

The document highlights how AI is contributing to the divergence of economic prosperity internationally, with US GDP growth outpacing that of Europe and China. The United States is currently a leader in private AI investments, model development, and computational capacity, while the EU's share of world GDP has decreased since 1980. Furthermore, the European continent lags in comparable AI metrics: investments, construction, software development, overall capacity, etc. China remains a major player in the sector, but the report emphasizes that much of its model training relies on US-designed hardware.

National Strategy and Energy Policy

The White House publication promotes an integrated national strategy with investment incentives at its core. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act granted significant financial breaks for data centers and IT infrastructure, and created favorable conditions for the rapid construction of facilities, in line with the act's goal of increasing GDP growth by more than one percentage point per year in the medium term. The report argues that deregulation in the AI sector supports productivity by reducing costs, increasing competition, and accelerating innovation. Trade agreements and foreign policy reinforce this approach, with foreign partners committing to purchasing large quantities of US-derived AI chips and infrastructure.

The document notes that AI data centers are energy-intensive and predicts that energy demand from AI infrastructure could reach up to 12% of domestic electricity consumption by 2028. It links the success of AI to energy availability and the ability of the power grid to deliver it, positioning control of energy supply as a prerequisite for international leadership in AI.