Apollo Chief Economist: Outside the Magnificent Seven, AI Has Yet to Help US Companies Earn Real Money

Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management, noted in a research report that for the S&P 493—the S&P 500 excluding the seven tech giants Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla—profit margins and revenue per employee have remained essentially flat, with no evidence that AI has improved their productivity. He believes it is difficult for ordinary US companies to convert increasingly cheap intelligent computing power into faster revenue growth and higher profit margins, because most of the intelligence businesses need is judgment, and AI cannot understand responsibility, trust, corporate culture, or ethical trade-offs.