Apollo chief economist Torsten Slok just published a gloomy report on AI.

imo, other signals I’m watching don’t really support these.

Slok says mainstream firms don’t need the latest model and won’t pay for it, and with no bottom-line gain they now treat token spending as a cost center that weighs on margins.

He says, total factor productivity growth sits near 0%, and Slok expects AI’s macro effect to stay very limited while agentic AI and token spending remain confined to a small slice of firms.

Argues cheaper, commoditized models may not close the gap, because per him, business value depends on judgment, accountability, trust and unwritten rules that AI doesn’t understand.