Citrini’s dystopian AI narrative may be wrong, but it could catalyse deeper thinking, policy change

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.