In Brief

Posted:

6:44 AM PST · February 23, 2026

On Sunday, an analyst group called Citrini Research published a remarkable piece illustrating how agentic AI could bring on mass economic destruction over the next two years. The scenario imagines a report from two years in the future, in which unemployment has doubled, and the total value of the stock market has fallen by more than a third. As the report puts it:

AI capabilities improved, companies needed fewer workers, white collar layoffs increased, displaced workers spent less, margin pressure pushed firms to invest more in AI, AI capabilities improved…

It was a negative feedback loop with no natural brake…The system turned out to be one long daisy chain of correlated bets on white-collar productivity growth.

It’s a new kind of bear case, focused not on Skynet-style misalignment but on the gradual unspooling of the economy itself.…