We’re in the AI economy, for better or worse. We got a glimpse at the finances of one of the industry’s key players last night, and things look a little precarious. We’ll dig into it, plus the way AI sets prices and the industry’s promises to regulate itself. But first, my colleague Justin Ho looks at overall U.S. economic growth, and AI’s part in it. — Tony Wagner, newsletter editor 

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The Bureau of Economic Analysis will release its third estimate of second quarter GDP tomorrow.

 Its previous estimate said that the economy grew at a 1.5% annual rate in the second quarter, after growing at a 2.1% annual rate in the first.

GDP is a measure of how much output the economy is producing, and the BEA tallies it by looking at who’s buying all of that output.

“So is it consumers — you’ve got consumer spending,” said David Kelly, chief global strategist at J.P. Morgan Asset Management. “Is it businesses doing investments — so, that’s investment spending.”

GDP also includes government spending and net exports. But Kelly said the first part of that list — consumer spending — has been resilient lately, partly because of the bigger tax refunds people got this year.

“And then, there’s also just this wealth effect,” he said. “We’re just coming up on the four year anniversary of a massive bull market in stocks, and that has generated a lot of wealth, making for a very resilient consumer.”

Then, there’s investment spending. Bernard Yaros, lead U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, said businesses have been investing a lot in inventories.

“When you look at a lot of the survey data, businesses are saying that their inventories are quite low, which means they need to re-stock,” Yaros said.

He also said there has been plenty of investment in AI — spending on data centers and all the equipment that goes into them. But he said a lot of that spending is boosting GDP more — in Taiwan, Korea, and other countries that make that equipment.

“I think we have to be careful not to overstate the benefits to growth and the economy,” Yaros said, “because a lot of the AI spending by businesses is imported from abroad.”

McDonald’s is reportedly using AI to set prices at its restaurants, widening gaps between nearby locations as software dials in on how much consumers are willing to pay for their Big Mac. That’s the future Owens wrote about in her new book “Gouged: The End of a Fair Price — and What That Means for Your Wallet.” She came on “Marketplace” today to talk about it.

President Trump announced America.gov, a new chatbot, today. The president has rejected calls to slow down AI development, and Trump assembled a group of top industry leaders who he says have agreed to police themselves to stave off the risk of human extinction. The accords are “morally binding.”

Trump says he wants the U.S. to maintain its lead in AI development, warning any impediment to artificial intelligence could send the industry overseas. “You're going to see, data centers are going to be very popular,” Trump said. Polling data is going the other direction.