For months, the threat of artificial intelligence (AI) replacing human workers has hovered over the American economy like a distant storm. But this week, the storm made landfall, as viral doomsday essays seemed to become reality.
AI executive Matt Shumer made a stir early in the month with an essay posted to X.com (and adapted for Fortune) that forcefully argued for white-collar workers to be afraid. He likened the moment to February 2020, with the pandemic rapidly approaching U.S. shores and a widely unprepared American public. The essay has been viewed 85 million times on the social media platform.
He wasn’t alone. Citrini Research, the top finance Substack, posted a similar essay on Feb. 22, warning of a “global intelligence crisis” brought on by sudden advancements in AI. The highly speculative, but deeply resonant essay painted a doomsday scenario of a “human intelligence displacement spiral” where AI agents rapidly replace software engineers, financial advisors, and middle management. At its core was the concept of a “ghost GDP”—economic output that benefits the owners of computing power but never circulates through the human consumer economy. In this scenario, stripped of high-paying salaries, prime borrowers default and tank the $13 trillion residential mortgage market, unemployment spikes above 10%, the stock market corrects down 38%, and the economy collapses into a deflationary spiral. Unusually for a work of speculative fiction, the market reacted to the piece, showing that the “AI scare” trade was real, at least in readers’ minds.
