The rapid and unbridled development of artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to disrupt the US economy in a way that is comparable to the “China shock” that displaced American workers, former US commerce secretary Gina Raimondo warns.

Speaking at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in New Delhi on Tuesday, she drew parallels between AI’s potential disruption to American jobs and the past impact of Chinese manufacturing competition on the US labour market.

“In America, we’ve seen what happens when we move through an economic transition without planning it … [the] so-called China shock left millions of Americans out of work and it destabilised our country,” Raimondo said.

The former commerce secretary, who served under former US president Joe Biden, made the point when suggesting that one of the challenges brought by AI advancement was to “prepare our people” for a technology that could put them out of work.

The term China shock refers to the economic and labour market disruption in the US caused by a massive surge of cheap Chinese imports that led to manufacturing job losses across US factories.

Raimondo blamed that for being the root of the divisive politics that “was still destabilising our country and the fuel firing populism on the left and on the right”, highlighting her concerns over the potential upheaval unfettered AI could bring to the US.

Her warning came as discussions of the emerging technology took centre stage on Tuesday, the first day of the 2026 edition of the Bloomberg New Economy Forum, a three-day event held in the Indian capital.

While Raimondo emphasised the risks associated with AI, other speakers argued that AI could prove a force in reshaping the global economy.

Jonathan Gray, president and chief operating officer of US investment giant Blackstone, said technological advances would fundamentally transform how consumers, businesses and governments operate.

Gray compared the emerging AI revolution to the industrial transformation of the US in the late 19th century, arguing that the spread of increasingly capable AI would have far-reaching consequences for economies and societies.

“We’re moving from a place like we did in the US … with the industrial revolution that when you bring this super intelligence to the entire world it’s going to profoundly change how we live, how consumers live, how businesses are [being] impacted and how governments oversee societies,” Gray said.

The scale of investment required to develop AI was another recurring theme at the forum, as technology companies pour billions of dollars into data centres, computing infrastructure and electricity generation to support increasingly sophisticated AI models and growing AI adoption.

Blackstone’s Gray said the firm had a positive view on electricity as everything involved -including technology, data centres, autonomous vehicles and robots – used electricity.

“So AI is gonna move from the desktop to the physical world that’ll demand more electricity. Obviously, the digital infrastructure is hugely important,” he said.

US Federal Reserve governor Christopher Waller warned in a separate forum discussion that the investment boom was already contributing to inflationary pressures.

As hyperscalers race to build out bigger and more data centres to power AI models, they were bidding up the prices of semiconductors of all types with a spillover effect to impact anyone else using the same products.

“That’s what we’re starting to see in the US. We’re starting to see AI [inducing] inflation because it’s just increasing demand in other areas,” Waller said.

He also cautioned that AI’s economic benefits would take time to materialise, as companies were still figuring out how to use the technology to boost productivity. “There’s a lot of trial and error and a lot of experimentation,” Waller said.