How AI agents could destroy the economy

In Brief

On Sunday, an expert radical called Citrini Research published a singular piece illustrating however agentic AI could bring connected wide economical demolition implicit the adjacent 2 years. The script imagines a study from 2 years successful the future, successful which unemployment has doubled, and the full worth of the banal marketplace has fallen by much than a third. As the study puts it:

AI capabilities improved, companies needed less workers, achromatic collar layoffs increased, displaced workers spent less, borderline unit pushed firms to put much successful AI, AI capabilities improved…

It was a antagonistic feedback loop with nary earthy brake…The strategy turned retired to beryllium 1 agelong daisy concatenation of correlated bets connected white-collar productivity growth. 

It’s a caller benignant of carnivore case, focused not connected Skynet-style misalignment but connected the gradual unspooling of the system itself. In particular, the Citrini script looks astatine the implications of integrating AI agents into the system astatine large, and what it would mean erstwhile extracurricular contractors get replaced by cheaper in-house AI. It’s akin to the Death of SaaS scenario, but Citrini goes further, implicating immoderate concern exemplary that involves optimizing transactions betwixt companies.

As you mightiness expect, the study is causing quite a stir online. Not everyone is buying it — adjacent Citrini describes it arsenic much of a script than a prediction — but it’s not truthful casual to sanction the circumstantial constituent wherever you deliberation the script goes wrong.

Personally, I’m not definite companies are acceptable to manus disconnected purchasing decisions to AI agents, nary substance however astute they are. But successful Citrini’s scenario, astir of the impacted decisions person already been handed disconnected to third-party contractors, truthful it’s not rather arsenic implausible arsenic it seems.

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