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- cross-posted to:
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US stock markets have been hit by a further wave of AI jitters, this time from yet another viral – and completely speculative – warning about the impact of the technology on the world’s largest economy.
The latest foreboding is from Citrini Research, a little-known US firm that provides insights on “transformative ‘megatrends’”. Its post on Substack, which it called a “scenario, not a prediction”, rattled investors by portraying a near future in which autonomous AI systems – or agents – upend the entire US economy, from jobs to markets and mortgages.
Citrini’s scenario begins now and ends in June 2028, with US unemployment cresting over 10% and an Occupy Silicon Valley movement setting up camp outside OpenAI and Anthropic’s offices. In the interim, a series of events triggered by the widespread use of AI agents guts software companies and ripples outwards, hitting private credit and mortgages, and leading to an unchecked downward spiral.
Speculative as it is, the scenario has unnerved investors. The S&P dropped more than 1% on Monday, and the software component of the index fell to its lowest level since Trump’s “liberation day” tariff announcement in April. Doubtless some of the wobble is attributable to Trump’s latest tariffs, but Uber, American Express, Mastercard and DoorDash, specifically named in Citrini’s report, all lost between 4% and 6%.
The “feedback without any breaks” dynamic certainly is what the AI industry is capable of, but it isn’t because of how powerful AI is, it is because the humans working in the AI industry have brainworms that inhibit the suppression of runaway feedback loops around their near spiritual beliefs about the capability of AI.
It isn’t the runaway capability of AI that is terrifying, rather what is terrifying are the runaway rationalizations of AI cultists who can’t admit they chose a shitty horse to get behind and it is never going to go anywhere faster than it is already failing to do.
AI fanboys will do ANYTHING to avoid facing that reality, they have given their ego no choice by building their entire identities and worldviews around it and that is what should terrify us.
The second thing here that should terrify us is how much of a Cargo Cult the financial industry is that these kinds of emotional fever dream panics actually dominate the price determination of major companies even though it isn’t that hard to do the research yourself and come to the conclusion all of this AI stuff is 99.99% bullshit.
Stop investing in AI, it is unbelievably dumb, invest in the local landscaping company around you, invest in ANYTHING else at all so long as there is real value to it unlike AI, you will end up with far more in the end.