Headline figures are understating both the cost and the benefits of AI, Goldman Sachs said.

The narrative so far has focused on capex — $400 billion on data centers and other infrastructure last year, likely $700 billion this year. But an equivalent non-hardware spend, on intangible capital such as workflow reorganization and software, is ramping up in parallel, bank economists said in a note to clients.

Those investments are usually not recorded as investment and appear as pure cost, masking productivity gains. Companies are trying to reorganize their business models to incorporate AI agents, but incentivizing or mandating it can create perverse incentives: Amazon staff are apparently using its in-house agent for unnecessary tasks to inflate usage scores, the Financial Times reported.