The easiest AI costs to count could become the least important part of the story. SemiAnalysis gives a better name to the harder problem: dark output, the economic value created by AI that remains invisible or badly distorted in GDP, price measures, labor data, and industry accounts.

A company can see its data-center bill, software subscription, token spend, and head count changes. It may fail to see the research brief that took five minutes instead of five hours, the sales proposal created before a call that would otherwise have gone unmade, or the internal analysis that replaces a paid consultant without creating a comparable transaction.

 …