A new article offering a dystopian glimpse into the future with artificial intelligence — one where the technology causes widespread unemployment — has prompted global backlash from investors and economists.
There’s been an uproar online since “The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis” was published Sunday by Citrini Research. The article, which isn’t a prediction but a hypothetical scenario, offers an unsettling forecast about the looming threat of AI to white-collar work.
The doomsday report, which hypothesized that AI’s boom will lead to mass white-collar layoffs and a stock market collapse, left Wall Street shaken this week, against a background of falling stock prices in major tech and financial firms.
While the report has caused unease for some, several experts have called the thesis far-fetched, according to Bloomberg. Even Citrini itself has cautioned that the report was just a hypothetical.
Part of Citrini’s scenario revolves around AI causing a negative feedback loop, in which companies invest more in AI and lay off more workers. With such a case, those laid-off workers would not be spending as much, causing companies to adopt even more AI to try and make a profit — and then the cycle repeats itself.
According to Citadel Securities, a market maker, there is little evidence of AI disruption in labor market data today. Macro strategist Frank Flight notes in a report published Tuesday that “it seems more likely that AI will be a complement rather than a substitute for labor” in many areas.
Clare Pleydell-Bouverie, co-head of the Liontrust Global Innovation team, told Bloomberg that the new technology may eliminate some jobs — but it will also create new ones.
“In Silicon Valley right now, there are new jobs that didn’t exist two years ago. Prompt engineers, interference optimization experts. So we do think that there will be some good news in this as well,” she said.
Other experts in the field also shared their feedback on the Citrini report with Bloomberg.
Pierre Yared, the acting chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers called it an “interesting piece of science fiction.”
“The Citrini report is an interesting piece of science fiction — and I like science fiction,” Yared told the publication. “But I think that if you really look at it, and think long and hard about it, it violates some of the basic accounting in economics.”
“AI can either be a groundbreaking innovation that increases production, increases income” and expenditure, “or it can be an innovation that ends up not delivering on its promise,” Yared said.
Alman Ahmed, the global head of macro at Fidelity International, told the outlet that politicians would protect workers from being replaced by AI.
“Politicians are not stupid people,” Ahmed said. “Ultimately the unemployment rate has an impact on policymaking. If there’s a runaway technology which can do everything — and we are not there yet — then who’s going to pay taxes? Are robots going to pay taxes?”
Jim Reid, Deutsche Bank’s global head of macro research and thematic strategy, told Bloomberg that Citrini’s thesis does not have “hard evidence” to back it up.
“The argument leans heavily on narrative and emotion rather than hard evidence,” Reid said. “That doesn’t mean it will ultimately be wrong, but in both cases the vibes to substance ratio is undeniably high. I’ll stop there, before anyone accuses my own research of the same thing.”
