In late February, Citrini Research published a scenario it called the "2028 Global Intelligence Crisis" 1. The mechanism: companies replace workers with AI agents, displaced workers cut spending, weaker demand compresses margins, and margin pressure drives still more automation. A deflationary spiral with no obvious exit.
Citrini is not Goldman Sachs or JPMorgan. But the report landed in the same week as Block's 40% workforce cut and within weeks of Amazon's 30,000 corporate reductions . The scenario read less like theory than like a description of the previous month's headlines. That timing explains its virality more than any analytical novelty.
The thesis has a weakness its critics would later exploit : it assumed a unidirectional path in which every dollar saved on labour exits the consumer economy permanently. In practice, some fraction returns as lower prices, shareholder consumption, or reinvestment. But the question of how much returns, and how fast, is precisely what neither Citrini nor its detractors have answered with data. The report's power was not its rigour. It was that it gave a name and a shape to an anxiety millions of workers already felt.
