Analyst Report Warns of Economic 'Feedback Loop' Triggered by AI Agents

A new analysis from Citrini Research is sparking intense debate with a stark vision of how the rapid adoption of AI agents could destabilize the economy. The group’s Sunday release, framed as a report from 2028, projects a future where unemployment has doubled and stock market value has plunged by over a third.

The core argument is a self-reinforcing cycle: as AI capabilities grow, companies shed white-collar jobs. Those displaced workers curb spending, which pressures corporate margins, leading firms to invest even more in AI to cut costs, which then accelerates job displacement. Citrini calls this a "negative feedback loop with no natural brake," describing the modern economy as a precarious chain of bets on white-collar productivity.

This isn't a tale of rogue superintelligence. The concern is a structural unraveling, specifically from integrating autonomous AI agents into business operations. The scenario suggests that as companies replace outside contractors with cheaper, in-house AI systems, it could trigger a cascading failure across any business model built on inter-company transactions.

While Citrini notes the paper is a scenario, not a firm prediction, it has gained traction because critics struggle to pinpoint exactly where the logic fails. Skeptics question whether firms would fully delegate critical decisions like procurement to AI. Citrini counters that many of these decisions are already outsourced to third parties, making a handoff to software less far-fetched. As one economic observer noted, 'The mechanism is chillingly simple. The hard part is proving it won’t happen.'