AI could cost you a fortune, and not because of the price of a ChatGPT subscription.

The AI investment boom is drawing enormous amounts of capital towards US technology companies. At the same time, war in the Gulf is pushing up energy and other real-world costs. These forces are colliding in global financial markets, with potentially serious consequences for interest rates, mortgages, rents, inflation, public spending and jobs.

In this video, I explain how the rush into AI shares is connected to movements in government bond markets, why central banks may respond by raising interest rates, and why those higher rates cannot solve supply-driven inflation caused by war, energy shortages or disruption to world trade.

The danger is that governments will then use higher borrowing costs as an excuse for austerity. Pensions, social care and other essential public services could come under pressure, even though ordinary people did not create the crisis.

This is about more than AI. It is about the relationship between financial markets, political power, war, central banks and economic policy.

The extraordinary concentration of money and power behind the AI boom has consequences. The question is who will ultimately be made to pay for them.

For more analysis, transcripts, explainers and infographics, visit Funding the Future.