America has never run from new technology, and artificial intelligence should be no exception — a Wall Street Journal opinion piece published Friday argues the US should humanize AI rather than avoid it, even as the industry confronts a widening gap between investment and revenue.
The Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece Friday arguing that America's historical embrace of new technology should extend to artificial intelligence, advocating for humanization rather than avoidance as the nation approaches its 2,500th birthday. The editorial arrives as the AI industry confronts a widening chasm between investment and revenue.
"The industry spent $1.4 trillion on AI so far, doubled in the last year, while generating only about $50 billion in annual revenue," author and activist Cory Doctorow said in a separate interview with Democracy Now! this week, describing what he called AI's "bad unit economics." Doctorow noted that $10 billion of the claimed $60 billion in revenue represents circular transactions between Microsoft and OpenAI.
The WSJ piece frames AI adoption as a continuation of America's technological tradition rather than a break from it, arguing the country has never run from innovation. This perspective contrasts with growing local resistance movements — voters in Monterey Park, California, earlier this month approved a ballot measure permanently banning new data center construction near a residential neighborhood, defeating a proposal for a massive AI site.
The investment-revenue gap widens
The $1.4 trillion in cumulative AI spending — which has doubled from $700 billion a year ago — faces a fundamental math problem. Doctorow described the dynamic as "very bad unit economics," meaning every new AI customer and every new use case loses more money for AI businesses rather than generating incremental profit, the opposite trajectory of the early web.
Unlike the dot-com era, where each additional web user made the internet more profitable, AI's cost structure worsens with scale. Doctorow attributed this to capital-driven automation — where companies invest in AI primarily to replace high-wage workers with substandard algorithms — rather than labor-driven automation aimed at improving product quality.
The WSJ editorial argues for a different path: humanizing AI technology rather than ceding ground to fear. The piece suggests America's historical willingness to adapt to technological change — from the industrial revolution to the internet age — provides a template for AI adoption.
Local resistance and the path forward
The Monterey Park data center ban represents a growing grassroots pushback against AI infrastructure expansion. Doctorow pointed to such local organizing as a more effective political strategy than consumer activism, citing Moms for Liberty as proof that "the dumbest people you know can make gigantic changes" by taking control of local offices and zoning decisions.
The Hollywood writers' strike of 2023 offers a counterexample of successful worker-led AI negotiation. Rather than demanding stronger copyright protections — which Doctorow argued have failed to increase creative workers' income despite 40 years of expansion — the Writers Guild secured sectoral bargaining rights that allowed them to negotiate AI usage terms collectively across all major studios.
For investors, the debate carries real portfolio implications. The $1.4 trillion in AI spending has flowed primarily to Nvidia's GPUs, data center construction, and cloud infrastructure from Microsoft, Amazon, and Google. If the revenue gap persists — or if local resistance slows infrastructure buildout — the return on that capital could disappoint. SpaceX, which drew $89 billion in demand for its debut bond sale this week, and SK Hynix, which surged 12% on its $29 billion US listing plan, represent the bull case that AI monetization will eventually catch up to investment.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
