Several blue-chip stocks dipped after a now-viral Substack post from a little-known financial research firm outlined a terrifyingly plausible scenario of imminent, global financial chaos brought about by artificial intelligence, The Guardian reported.
What's happening?
On Feb. 22, Citrini Research published what it described as a "thought exercise," but what followed was sincerely unsettling.
At the outset, a brief introduction to the analysis indicated that it was not intended to be viewed as a "prediction," adding that it was predicated on a question of whether "AI bullishness … [was] actually bearish."
In finance, the terms "bull" or "bullish" and "bear" or "bearish" refer to markets and individual positions — bullish approaches expect economic growth, whereas bears anticipate dips.
Citrini outlined a harrowingly reasonable chain of routine market fluctuations that would culminate in chaos as agentic AI consumed and confounded the global economy.
A scenario that began with unprecedented white-collar layoffs quickly devolved into mortgage meltdowns as capital continued to concentrate in the tech and AI sectors.
"The system wasn't designed for a crisis like this. The federal government's revenue base is essentially a tax on human time," Citrini's analysis explained. "People work, firms pay them, the government takes a cut.
"... The government needs to transfer more money to households at precisely the moment it is collecting less money from them in taxes."
According to The Guardian, shares in American Express, DoorDash, Mastercard, and Uber dipped after Citrini's "doomsday report" went viral.
Why is this concerning?
As Citrini emphasized, the scenario outlined was not a prediction — but it eerily echoed credible, ongoing concerns about AI's potential to unleash global economic unrest.
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Save $1,000 this year 💸 In November, stock market savant Michael Burry — whose alerts about the 2008 housing crash famously went unheeded — warned of an AI bubble, taking a bearish position and winding down operations at his own firm.
Burry could be written off as an AI bear even with his solid track record, but Google CEO Sundar Pichai acknowledged that fears of overinvestment in AI weren't baseless and even conceded that the search giant wouldn't be spared pain.
While tech firms and financial outfits debate the risk of an AI crash, the nascent technology causes problems in schools, communities near data centers, and households.
AI systems are resource-intensive, requiring gargantuan processing facilities to keep them running. These data centers strain water resources and add stress to the fragile public grid.
As experts such as Geoffrey Hinton have raised concerns about mass unemployment, the costs of AI innovation are being passed on to American households in the form of huge electric bills driven by data center demand.
What's being done about it?
In this case, a single, speculative post from a then-obscure financial firm caused measurable stock dips, signaling easily triggered investor uncertainty about the future of AI.
According to Citrini, "time" is the challenge policymakers face.
"AI capability is evolving faster than institutions can adapt. The policy response is moving at the pace of ideology, not reality. If the government doesn't agree on what the problem is soon, the feedback loop will write the next chapter for them," it cautioned.
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