Trump's AI Action Plan, GPT-5 Rumors & AI's Economic Upheaval

The landscape of Artificial Intelligence is rapidly evolving in mid-2025, marked by significant policy shifts, economic projections, technological advancements, and a reevaluation of AI’s impact on employment and mental health.

Trump Administration’s AI Action Plan

The White House, under the Trump administration, recently unveiled “Winning the AI Race: America’s AI Action Plan” on July 23, 2025. This comprehensive 28-page document outlines over 90 federal policy actions across three core pillars: Accelerating Innovation, Building American AI Infrastructure, and Leading in International Diplomacy and Security. The plan emphasizes fostering market-driven growth and reducing regulatory barriers to accelerate AI development and deployment. Key initiatives include expediting permits for data centers and semiconductor fabs, promoting the export of American AI technology, and ensuring that federal government contracts for frontier large language models are objective and free from “top-down ideological bias.” The administration views AI as a cornerstone for American innovation, economic competitiveness, and national security, aiming to cement the U.S. as the global leader in AI. This strategy marks a departure from the previous administration’s approach, which focused more on safeguards against AI-enabled harms.

Economic Implications of AI

AI is projected to have a profound impact on the global economy. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts that AI could boost global GDP by approximately 0.5% annually between 2025 and 2030, with economic gains outweighing the costs associated with increased carbon emissions from energy-intensive data centers. PwC research from April 2025 suggests that AI has the potential to increase global economic output by up to 15 percentage points over the next decade, adding one percentage point to annual growth rates, comparable to the industrialization era of the 19th century. However, the UN warns that while AI is set to become a $4.8 trillion global market by 2033, its benefits might be concentrated among a privileged few without urgent action to address the widening digital divide.

GPT-5 Rumors and AI Development Pace

Rumors surrounding OpenAI’s GPT-5 model suggest an imminent release, potentially as early as August 2025. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has hinted at the model’s advanced capabilities, stating that it made him feel “useless compared to the AI” after using it for a coding project. GPT-5 is expected to offer significant improvements in reasoning, memory, and multimodal abilities, unifying various functionalities under one system. The rapid pace of AI development is also evident in OpenAI’s increasing market share and usage statistics. By mid-2025, over 92% of Fortune 500 companies are estimated to use OpenAI products or APIs, and average daily queries to OpenAI’s API exceed 2.2 billion.

AI’s Impact on the Job Market

While AI promises economic growth, it is also a significant factor in ongoing tech layoffs. Companies like Intel, Microsoft, Google, and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) have announced major job cuts in 2025, with AI-driven restructuring cited as a primary reason. Some companies are openly stating that they are reducing human workforces in favor of AI-based tools and services, or that layoffs are for “strategic positioning” to align with AI strategies, even when profitable. Reports indicate that up to 40% of global jobs could be affected by AI, and some studies suggest that as many as two million manufacturing workers could be replaced by AI by 2025. Conversely, demand for AI skills is rising in other sectors like marketing, education, finance, and human resources, with professionals in these areas potentially seeing higher pay.

Advice for College Students from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang advises students to embrace generative AI and learn how to effectively interact with AI tools. He emphasizes that regardless of their field, students should ask themselves, “How can I use AI to do my job better?” Huang also recently stated that if he were a student today, he would focus more on physical sciences than software sciences, highlighting the increasing importance of “Physical AI” and robotics in understanding real-world forces.

AI for Therapy

AI is increasingly being integrated into mental health care, offering accessible and personalized support. AI-powered tools are transforming therapy by providing 24/7 support, improving early detection of issues, and automating administrative tasks for therapists. Notable AI mental health tools in 2025 include Wysa, which combines AI-based CBT guidance with optional human therapist support; Talkspace, which uses AI to match users with licensed therapists; and Limbic Care, a European platform improving therapy attendance and recovery rates. Other tools like Woebot and Tess offer chatbot-based support and exercises. Research suggests that people are comfortable sharing their concerns with AI bots, and AI can even enhance therapeutic alliances with human providers by offering personalized exercises before initial appointments. Google is also investing in AI research for treating anxiety, depression, and psychosis, and developing a field guide for mental health organizations on how to responsibly scale evidence-based AI interventions.