Citadel Securities has issued a formal rebuttal to Citrini Research’s viral “2028 Global Intelligence Crisis” thesis, arguing that current labour market data shows no evidence of imminent white-collar displacement.
Authored by global macro analyst Frank Flight, the response highlights US unemployment at 4.28%, AI capital expenditure at roughly 2% of GDP or $650 billion, nearly 2,800 planned data centres and an 11% year-on-year rise in software engineering job postings as signs of continued labour resilience.
“The imminent disintermediation narrative rests on the speed of diffusion,”
Said Citadel Securities global macro analyst, Frank Flight.
The firm contends that while AI systems may improve recursively, economic adoption historically follows an S-curve in which early uptake is slow and costly before accelerating and eventually plateauing as integration expenses, regulation and diminishing marginal returns take hold.
“Markets often extrapolate the acceleration phase linearly but history implies pace of adoption plateaus as organisational integration is costly, regulation emerges and diminishing marginal returns exist in economic deployment,”
Said Citadel Securities global macro analyst, Frank Flight.
Citadel further argues that AI-driven automation constitutes a positive productivity shock that should raise real incomes over time, noting that national income accounting makes it difficult to reconcile rising output with a simultaneous collapse in aggregate demand.
“There is little evidence of AI disruption in labor market data as of today. In fact, the forward-looking components of our labor market tracking have improved and AI data center construction appears to be driving a pick-up in construction hiring,”
Said Citadel Securities global macro analyst, Frank Flight.