This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. I'm hearing the same murmurings about the economy that you are.

Catchphrases like, correction, bubble, crash, buy

gold, reduce your exposure, or more bluntly cash out. Since the beginning of the year, when Donald

Trump began his tariff rollout, the markets, even at record heights, have been in turmoil.

And if Trump had gone through with all his most

unpredictable and punitive tariffs, we might have faced real disaster, a major recession. But he

didn't, not quite. And the market stabilized over the year. In fact, they've been surging lately.

That has some people worried about a threat that could be bigger still.

They worry that the economy and its expansion is so dependent on the realm of artificial intelligence,

with all its fantastical prospects and unknowns, that we might be in trouble and very soon.

Just the other day, Sam Altman seemed to suggest that companies like OpenAI might need a

government bailout. And that caused a furor. Altman quickly walked that statement back.

In some level, like at some level, when something gets sufficiently huge, whether or not they are

on paper, the federal government is kind of the insurer

of last resort, as we've seen in various financial crises and insurance companies screwing things up.

So, I guess, given the magnitude of what I expect AI economic impact to look like,

sort of, I do think the government ends up as like the insurer

of last resort. I'm no expert on what's happening here, but Andrew Ross Sorkin certainly is.

If you follow finance, you know Sorkin is the co-anchor of Squawk Box on CNBC. He also founded

the New York Times business site Deal Book.

Ross Sorkin's last book was too big to fail,

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