各政府和企业都将面临日益增加的AI开支，但目前尚不清楚是否有足够的资金来支付这些费用。
The AI bill is coming for governments and businesses, and no one knows whether the money will be there to pay it.
多家咨询巨头发布的最新报告显示，随着各类试点项目不断增多以及具备自主操作能力的AI应用迅速普及，企业对于AI的态度已从“它是否可行”转变为“相关投入能否持续承受”。
Two new reports from consulting giants show how the AI adoption conversation has shifted from whether it works to whether the spending on it is sustainable, as pilot programs pile up and agentic applications take off.
近段时间，关于AI安全性的讨论热度颇高，相比之下，有关AI对宏观经济影响的讨论虽同样紧迫却显得相对低调。贝恩咨询公司本周发布的报告指出，到2031年，整个行业对算力的需求将催生每年6万亿美元的市场规模，其中约4.2万亿美元将来自目前尚不存在的新市场和新产品。
The debate over AI safety in recent weeks has somewhat dwarfed the still very urgent discourse over AI’s macroeconomic impacts. Those stakes were made clear in a Bain & Company report this week that found that the industry’s compute demand will require $6 trillion in annual revenue by 2031 — including about $4.2 trillion from new markets and products that don’t exist yet.
与此同时，AI采购方也面临巨大压力。麦肯锡针对美国政府机构——这一企业级AI产品的重要且增长迅速的客户群体——发布报告指出，虽然单个AI处理单元的成本正在下降，但由于自主型AI系统需要消耗大量算力，整体开支反而持续攀升。
At the same time, buyers of AI are coming under pressure. A McKinsey report focusing on American government entities — a large and fast-growing customer for enterprise AI — warned that the per-token price of AI is collapsing, but the total bill is rising, as agents require much more compute.
麦肯锡高级合伙人兼全球公共部门负责人蒂姆·沃德指出，过去许多政府使用AI的成本几乎可以忽略不计，但这种情况即将改变。随着Anthropic和OpenAI即将上市，外界对这两家公司能否凭借营收水平匹配其高估值也将展开更多讨论。信用评级机构Egan-Jones则在周三发布的报告中断言：“经济结构的全面变革几乎已成定局。”— J.D. Capelouto
For many governments, until now, “usage might have been essentially near-zero cost,” McKinsey Senior Partner and Global Public Sector Leader Tim Ward told me. Very soon, “it won’t be.”The coming IPOs from Anthropic and OpenAI will surely bring more debate over whether their revenue can catch up to the labs’ lofty valuations. But “the complete disruption of the economy is all but certain,” credit rating agency Egan-Jones wrote Wednesday, in a note titled . — J.D. Capelouto