Why does anyone think an AI pause would hurt the economy?

I've seen a bunch of people claiming "well, we need to make sure whatever our AI policy is doesn't hurt the economy because people will feel that in their wallets and hate it (and hurting the economy is bad." This might hypothetically be true, but I've never seen anyone argue for it in any detail. Meanwhile, I'd naively expect if shut down AI anytime soon, it'd be that big a deal? (It makes sense that it'd become a bigger deal as AI takes over more of the economy. But it feels like the people saying "it'd hurt the economy" are often the people implying that means we should do less of a pause and do it later). I don't know much about economic recessions. But, like, here's the 2007-2009 recession and the Covid blip. GDP https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDP Unemployment https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-unemployment-rate.htm I asked Claude If the frontier AI industry and datacenter build out completely halted, what do you predict would happen to US unemployment and GDP? Claude said: My central estimate: a sudden, complete halt would likely cause a US recession. Unemployment would probably peak around 5.5–6.5%, up from roughly 4.2–4.4% today. Real GDP would end up about 2–4% below where it would otherwise be within 12–18 months. That would be worse than the 2001 dot-com bust but well short of 2008. Here is how I get there. Full response Starting point Labor market: September’s report showed unemployment at 4.2%, and the rate has stayed in a narrow 4.1%–4…