In the early 2000s, at a very different time in history, I was a huge fan of a series of books written by Russ Kick.

He wrote a delightful book titled “Everything You Know Is Wrong,” the sequel to another book he wrote with a similar vibe, “You Are Being Lied To.”

The publisher for both books was a fun group called “Disinformation Books”. Their name feels a lot less fun in the world post-Social Media and the expansive spread of actual disinformation. But it was a fun name at the time.

As nicely articulated in Everything You Know Is Wrong’s Amazon description, “once you read [it] you’ll wonder if anything you know is right.”

Russ put together a fascinating collection of stories and articles that did challenge the status quo. If nothing else, these books provided fabulous conversational fodder that kicked the piss out of regular small talk.

I have used the title and the concept of “Everything You Know Is Wrong” in many conversations and presentations since then, with the intent of getting people to step back and question whether their standing assumptions and established norms are correct or serve them well.

I do believe that Artificial Intelligence is having an impact on our lives, our work, and our world.

I have written here about how AI is impacting, or will impact, our night sky, the way we think, the way we work, our energy consumption patterns, the way we define and construct meaning, and a country’s ability to wage war, among other topics.

But what if a lot of our base assumptions about AI to date are, in fact, wrong?

What if it turns out that, in spite of the extraordinary investment in artificial intelligence, there is no productivity gain, no economic benefit, and no measurable impact on jobs?

Some big-name US CEOs are quitting before they have to bother learning about AI or how it might change their businesses.

At the same time, US big tech companies are currently planning to spend an additional $650 billion on AI infrastructure in 2026 alone.

That number might go up before the end of the year.

In a recent Washington Post discussion on AI and the global economy, Joseph Briggs, joint lead of global economics investment research at Goldman Sachs, argued that investment spending on AI had “basically zero” impact on US GDP growth last year.

Briggs’ colleague, Goldman chief economist Jan Hatzius, has been quoted as saying, “We don’t actually view AI investment as strongly growth-positive. I think there’s a lot of misreporting, actually, on the impact that AI investment had in US GDP growth in 2025, and it’s much smaller than is often perceived because most AI equipment is imported. That means there’s a positive entry in the investment line, but that’s offset by a negative entry in the net-exports line.”

These fine folks at Goldman are pointing out that any perceived growth from AI is mostly ending up in Taiwan, at chipmaker TSMC’s doorstep, and barely anywhere else.

When US companies like Nvidia, Google, or Elon’s xAI say that they are making a new chip, it’s actually TSMC (or to a lesser degree, Samsung in Korea) manufacturing it.

The net economic benefits don’t stay in the United States.

AI might not be directly impacting employment either. Or at least, not yet, and not in the ways you might expect.

Dario Perkins, an economist at TS Lombard, believes that, ” There is no evidence that AI deployment is either boosting productivity or damaging US employment… While US productivity has been strong and hiring weak, our analysis finds that cyclical forces — not automation — are to blame. Since Liberation Day, US companies have had to endure a significant tariff-induced margin squeeze. They have also faced extreme policy uncertainty. Their response was predictable: they hired fewer people and pushed their existing workforce harder.”

Other research also suggests that introducing AI in the enterprise is actually causing employees to work harder rather than making their jobs easier.

Analysis of over 164,000 workers’ digital work activity by ActivTrak, examining their activity 180 days before and after employees started using AI at work, found that AI “intensified” their jobs in nearly every category.

The time they spent on email, messaging, and chat apps more than doubled, while their use of business software surged by 94%.

Finally, new research from Oxford Economics also casts doubt on the narrative that artificial intelligence is currently causing mass unemployment.

According to their analysis, “firms don’t appear to be replacing workers with AI on a significant scale,” suggesting instead that companies may be using the technology as a cover or public relations spin to justify job reductions.

There you have it.

The economic gains are questionable.

People being told they are losing their jobs to AI are actually losing them either due to overhiring or simply because organizations are cutting costs amid growing economic uncertainty.

The people who are still working are working harder, not smarter.

Meanwhile, the top 10 US founders and bosses of the world’s largest technology companies saw their finances swell to nearly $2.5 trillion, up from $ 1.9 trillion, according to figures from Bloomberg.

For those 10 individuals, the growth of artificial intelligence has been a fantastic wealth generator.

For the rest of us, it’s a great way to quickly generate an image or an AI robot staring into the abyss, but that doesn’t help pay the mortgage.

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