AI replacing human jobs? Fortress Securities and economists confront Citrini: This is "science fiction," not reality!
Citadel Securities macro strategist Frank Flight released a research report this week, refuting the recent pessimistic predictions that have caused market turmoil, and arguing that the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence is unlikely to trigger a large-scale unemployment crisis.
In his report on Tuesday, Flight wrote that historical patterns show “waves of technological change have neither brought uncontrolled exponential growth, nor rendered the workforce completely obsolete.”
The report directly responds to prior research from Citrini Research, which drew attention for depicting a dystopian scenario in which AI replaces multiple industries and white-collar workers on a large scale by 2028, causing a significant correction in tech stocks. In response, a senior economist publicly dismissed the Citrini report as “science fiction” and questioned the reasonableness of its hypothesized trajectory.
Citrini founder James Van Gillen later clarified that the report presented a “hypothetical scenario” and “not a prediction.” He indicated he was surprised by the large-scale market turmoil caused by the report and emphasized that its intent was to construct a hypothetical framework, not to make definitive judgments about the future.
No Evidence of Broad Impact in Existing Data
Flight cited St. Louis Fed survey data and his own labor market indicators to highlight that there are currently no signs showing AI has caused systemic disruption to the employment market.
He specifically mentioned that demand for hiring software engineers has rebounded markedly in recent months, even though this is often considered one of the fields most susceptible to automation. Meanwhile, driven by the boom in AI-related data center construction, recruitment in the construction industry has also revived.
In his view, artificial intelligence is more likely to be a “complement” to the workforce rather than a replacement, similar to the trajectories of previous technological revolutions. He illustrated the point with an analogy:
“To properly define this debate, we can simply ask: was the advent of Microsoft Office a supplement or a replacement for office workers?”
Extremely Low Probability All Five Conditions for AI Replacement of Workforce Will Be Met
Looking from a historical perspective, Flight pointed out that technological change usually follows an S-curve: initial adoption is slow, gradually accelerating as costs decline, then leveling out. As technology spreads, the risk of sudden large-scale replacement of the workforce also decreases.
From an economic viewpoint, he offered a rejection criterion: if the marginal cost of compute power required by AI exceeds the marginal cost of human labor, then the economic logic for machines replacing humans does not hold.
Flight further outlined five conditions that would need to be met for AI to cause a “persistent negative demand shock”: AI adoption rate must accelerate continuously, workforce replacement rate must approach universal, governments must not implement any fiscal response, investments cannot offset the shock, and compute power expansion faces hard constraints. He believes it’s extremely unlikely for all these conditions to be met simultaneously.
Meanwhile, he noted that if large-scale job losses occur, governments around the world would be very likely to intervene with regulatory and fiscal stimulus measures, thus slowing the progress of replacement.
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