How AI agents can destroy the economy

On Sunday, a research group called Citrini Research published amazing piece showing how AIs will bring economic destruction in the next two years. This article assumes a report of two years in the future, in which unemployment has doubled, and the value of the market has decreased by more than three times. As the report states:

The potential of AI has improved, companies need fewer workers, the removal of white collars has increased, displaced workers have less money, pressure on margins has forced companies to invest more in AI, AI technology is improving…

It was mind-boggling with no natural brakes… The system became a long series of coordinated bets on white-collar productivity growth.

It’s a new kind of bear, which is not only focused on the negative aspects of Skynet but on the slow destruction of the economy itself. In particular, the Citrini event looks at the implications of integrating AI agents throughout the economy, and what it could mean after outsourcing contracts are replaced by low-cost in-house AI. It’s the same as The death of SaaS events, but Citrini goes further, referring to any type of business that involves optimizing transactions between companies.

As you might expect, the report is triggering of course a activate on the Internet. Not everyone is buying – although Citrini explains that it’s more of a case than a prediction – but it’s not easy to pinpoint exactly where you think the process is going wrong.

Personally, I’m not sure companies are ready to hand over purchasing options to AI assistants, no matter how smart they are. But in Citrini’s case, many of the decisions involved have already been outsourced to third-party contractors, so it’s not as impossible as it seems.