The AI Economic Doomsday Report That Shook Wall Street

Our colleague David Huberti was doom scrolling on Sunday night, like a lot of us do, when a certain post caught his eye. I was reading in bed on my iPad this interesting substack post from a financial research firm I hadn't heard of before. It was published by a relatively unknown firm called Citrini Research. And it was written like a memo from the future from June 2028 looking back at how artificial intelligence transformed the economy. And he basically framed this report as sort of like a post mortem on what happened over the time between now and then and how the economy has changed. It read to me like really good science fiction. I didn't put it down despite the fact that it was 7,000 plus words long. The picture the Citrini report painted in the future was bleak. We described it as a doomsday report, very much so it was. In the scenario that they outlined, there was something like 10.2% unemployment across The United States, which is worse than what it was in the depths of the great recession. The report proposed that AI will become so good at writing code and replacing jobs that it could become very bad for the broader economy. Basically, the question is not whether, like, AI is bearish or bullish for the economy, is that what if it's so bullish that it becomes bearish? David wasn't the only one reading the Satrini post that night. It was going viral and it was freaking people out. Pretty soon after the market opened on Monday morning, a lot of stocks that we follow in the software space in particular were all flashing red on our screens. And when something across the entire sector is moving the same direction, it tends to mean something big is happening. Investors. The Dow dropping about 1.6% losing more than 800 points Salesforce, Snowflake, few other software names falling sharply. Synchrony and Capital One. Those names plunging. So too is DoorDash and Uber. DoorDash, that stock was down over 6% and all coming after that report we are talking about from Centrini Research, where they lay out the potential risks of that AI. Why do you think this post about a hypothetical future, almost like science fiction, led to such a big reaction in the stock market? I think it really articulated a lot of existing fears that people have about artificial intelligence. I think people who think a lot about this space and the uncertainty around it are looking for ways to understand it, and this definitely tapped into that vein. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Ryan Knudson. It's Friday, February 27. Coming up on the show, the AI doomsday report that shook the stock market. If data management is slowing down your business, you need the Intuit ERP. If one entity is here and one here and one here and one here and one here, you need …