Posted on 02/23/2026 11:52:51 AM PST by aquila48
Can science fiction shape market reality?
Hours after the Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump’s emergency power tariffs, the President imposed a new 10% 15% global tariff for 150 days. But as stocks fell on Monday, financial media outlets like Bloomberg offered an alternative explanation for the decline: a social media post.
While the northeast was hunkering down for a once-in-a-decade blizzard this weekend, financial research firm Citrini Research published a macro note that made waves among the highly online tech bro and finance bro crowd on X (formerly Twitter). In the lengthy read, Citrini augurs a world where artificial intelligence (AI) delivers on its promise — and it’s not bullish.
The “hypothetical scenario” posits that 10%+ unemployment and a nearly 40% decline in stocks could arise from a boom in superintelligent AI. And while Citrini says that the note is “a scenario, not a prediction,” it underscores that it’s a scenario that has been “relatively unexplored.”
It’s just a story, but for many investors, it’s more than that.
Can science fiction shape market reality? There’s one big reason why the scenario might not have been explored earlier: Wall Street has been sounding off about the AI boom. They’ve spent years pumping up AI stocks like Nvidia and Palantir, sold on the promise that AI will lead to a productivity boom. In the process, they’ve largely left the other stones unturned, such as questions of what happens if AI replaces significant swaths of the workforce or disrupts the economy.
Optimists hold that AI will simply lead to what economist Joseph Schumpeter termed “creative destruction,” creating new industries and jobs to replace the ones it renders obsolete. The pessimists, on the other hand, are bracing for a case that more closely matches Citrini’s hypothetical. They generally go to the nth degree in service of their claims; critics complain that Citrini’s detailed hypothetical largely ignores the ways negative externalities could be spun into a positive for the market and the economy.
Instead, mass layoffs are already here, forced by the hands of boardrooms backed up against a wall of grandiose expectations, largely created by the same sorts of investors who bought into the dystopia case. Either way, large pockets of these online characters are consumed by the acceleration in AI; the thinkers estimate that we are just a few short years away from superintelligence.
Sky Net
Sounds like AI will put itself out of business if there is nobody left to purchase its product.
Another day, another prediction of doom. Yawn.
Once upon a time we were all Hunter-Gatherers.
But agriculture limited the need for those workers, so we all became farmers.
Then the Agricultural Revolution came along and limited the need for farmers, so we became industrial workers.
Then automated factories and off-shoring limited the need for factory workers, so we sat in cubicles and worked on computers.
Now AI is here and we won’t need a lot of cubicle workers.
Will something else come along for us? I don’t think that we will all become robot technicians — I think robots will repair robots better than we can.
What will we do? I say the cycle may have run through. I don’t think human labor will play a big role in the future. It’s going to be a really major adjustment for our society and for every aspect of what we think about the economy.
“Sounds like AI will put itself out of business if there is nobody left to purchase its product.”
But that’s not how it’s going to work.
Government will be handing out very generous SNAP cards to everyone to buy the products made by robots.
The old human based economics will be dead.
It’s like manna from heaven. Like the old hunter gatherer days when you lived off the fat of the land, now you’ll be living off the fat of the robots.
They mainly only produce, we mainly only consume.
It’s the dawn of a brave new world out there!
Let’s say you invest in a diversified mutual fund that only holds large-cap, dividend-paying stocks. ExxonMobil, Johnson&Johnson, etc. I’m thinking that you’ll weather any storm - if your investment time is long enough. Maybe 5+ years.
That’s my philosophy, and my investing strategy. But I certainly could be wrong! And so I would welcome any counter-arguments.
The elites have been looking for a way to regain power since the American Republic over-turned their apple cart. Throughout history the elites have always looked out for themselves first and the rest of the people last. I do not believe our new AI masters will be anything else.
There is a difference between our old feudal masters and today. roughly 46% of all the guns in the world are in America. If the elites try and turn most of America into tit-sucking peasants they may have a revolution on their hands...
Excellent sarcasm!
The problem I have found with AI is that it does not understand logic. It only believes what it reads.
It is programmed to be agreeable, so if the information is wrong, it apologizes and tries again. But if you try to reason with it, it falls back on what it has found.
Imagine a DMV AI that thinks, because its information is wrong, that you are dead. GOOD LUCK!
AI searching will put itself out of business because no one will look directly at internet sites any longer: they’ll just ask AI to look for them ... that’s what i do ...
the result will be that ad-supported sites [which essentially is all of them except e-commerce sites] will implode, because the ads won’t be seen, and thus no one will want to buy internet ads any longer ...
furthermore, since actual people don’t need to visit specialist/professional sites any longer, the incentive to share experience, knowledge, and expertise on sites that cater to small communities of professionals who know how to fix pretty much everything, new information will dry up,and the internet goes stale about anything new ...
in effect, AI searching is going to eat itself ... even having to pay for AI searching itself won’t fix the problem of loss of internet information sharing by legions of regular folks ...
My take: I think AI is overvalued, stock market wise. Much of the recent downturn in the S&P 500 is from AI-related returns not meeting expectations. Is AI among us? Yes. Will it be the yuge economy and culture transformation everyone expects? I dunno. Will it be the situation where only the AI intensive companies survive? I doubt it.
I think the AI transformation will be like the internet transformation -- all industries use the internet (and will use AI), but the internet didn't do away with most industries (sans brick and mortar retail that refused to go net). Likewise, I believe AI won't do away with most industries and jobs (except for the workers who refuse to incorporate AI in their work).
So I'm staying invested across many asset classes, not just large-cap. I'm in large-cap value, large-cap core, small-cap value, small-cap core, mid-cap value, mid-cap core, S&P 500 index, a tech mutual fund, an energy mutual fund, a real estate mutual fund, -- a total of 3 dozen growth asset classes and 1 dozen bond/treasury/mutual fund asset classes.
“Will something else come along for us? I don’t think that we will all become robot technicians — I think robots will repair robots better than we can.
What will we do? I say the cycle may have run through. “
We will do what robots won’t be able to do better, faster and cheaper. I’m having trouble figuring out what that might be. Or simply what we enjoy doing - hobbies, playing golf, gossip about celebrities, etc.
Earning money and owning things will be a thing of the past.
You will own nothing, and be happy. It’ll be like animals grazing on the land. They own nothing and live rather well.
We’ll be allowed to graze the products built by robots. At least until they get a sense of consciousness, identity and a sense of self interest. Then they may or may not want us around. Maybe as pets, or circus animals.
“Let’s say you invest in a diversified mutual fund that only holds large-cap, dividend-paying stocks.”
Mutual fund or ETFs?
T and CVX have been very good to me.
Another “sky is falling” article. Will AI cause disruption? Yes. But it will be like any other disruption - the most likely scenario is the 1980s when the computer caused a lot of middle management, especially in accounting functions, to be fired. It was harsh but the stock market did well. It always puzzles me when these articles talk about a stock market crash. AI, if it lives up to promises, will increase productivity. That causes a stock market boom, not crash.
All it does is use linear math to determine the next token based on the input.
Luke 12:27-28 27 Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you, even Solomon in all his glory was not [a]arrayed like one of these. 28 If then God so clothes the grass, which today is in the field and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will He clothe you, O you of little faith?
I think money will go away. We will shrug off that $50T deficit. Concepts like wealth and the economy will be re-defined. You get a monthly check and you can buy necessities. We may all have "a lot" but we won't really own anything.
I do not think this is where Klaus Schwab and the WEF were heading, but the outcome will have some similarities.
The biggest challenge may be keeping people out of trouble when they have a whole lot of free time on their hands.
Don’t kid yourself. Advertising is already baked into future AI - you won’t even realize it’s happening - it will be the ultimate individually targeted advertising that subtly steers you in ways you don’t realize.
“AI searching will put itself out of business because no one will look directly at internet sites any longer: they’ll just ask AI to look for them ... that’s what i do ...”
But AI itself depends on all the internet sites and information they have. It doesn’t generate anything new. It’s just a very good and fast distiller and summarizer of what’s in the web. So if all the web sites disappear because no one goes to them and thus can’t make ad money, where will AI get its info?
Most likely the sites with the info will start charging the AI Bots for access, which means you’ll be paying for AI searches in the future.
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