Citrini’s dystopian AI narrative may be wrong, but it could catalyse deeper thinking, policy change
The research firm imagined a tax on the use of AI, and the establishment of a public claim on the returns from AI infrastructure
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Citrini Research’s imaginary memo from the year 2028, which pretends to recount how the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) caused a surge in white-collar unemployment and economic turmoil in the United States, was met by a barrage of criticism last week.
While I found myself mostly agreeing with Citrini’s detractors, I wondered if the pushback would have been quite as aggressive if the little known research firm’s doomsday narrative from the future hadn’t sparked the unnerving sell-off that it did.
Just about every company mentioned in the fictional memo saw their shares wobble early last week – from software-as-a-service (SaaS) platforms such ServiceNow and Salesforce to payments giants Visa and Mastercard and even asset managers Blackstone and KKR.
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