AI costs spiral: NSA spent billions, US healthcare billing up nearly $1B in two years
The Decoder · rss · 2026-09-25
The Decoder rounds up reporting on how AI is driving up costs across sectors:
- NSA: has already spent billions of dollars testing advanced AI models, mostly on compute, per The Washington Sun
- Oversight costs: lawmakers expect full-scale AI oversight to cost tens of billions per year, versus an earlier CBO estimate of just $20 million — off by three orders of magnitude
- Healthcare: AI-assisted billing codes added nearly $1 billion in US costs over two years
- Insurers face similar cost pressures
Key takeaway: "intelligence doesn't come cheap" — real-world AI deployment costs are vastly exceeding early estimates.
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