The Lloyds (LSE:LLOY) share price pulled back on Monday after a report entitled The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis spooked the market. The memo by Citrini Research imagines a scenario, just two years from now, in which AI iss proven a huge success, but the global economy suffers.
It’s a scenario that my Foolish colleagues and I have been pondering the past few months. AI promises greater efficiency, reducing labour costs to almost nothing in certain parts of the economy, but is that really good for us?
The memo starts: “June 30th, 2028: The unemployment rate printed 10.2% this morning, a 0.3% upside surprise. The market sold off 2% on the number, bringing the cumulative drawdown in the S&P to 38% from its October 2026 highs.”
Yes, it’s just fiction, but it’s exactly what many of us have been worrying about. AI is becoming so efficient that layoffs seem almost inevitable. The memo imagines that, in 2028, a single GPU cluster is generating the output of 10,000 white-collar workers.
But that’s just the start. Citrini’s scenario suggests AI disruption won’t be contained. It starts with software defaults in 2027, but by the end of the year it’s threatening “every business model predicated on intermediation“.
The opening act, it forecasts, sees companies increase AI spending to boost efficiency and cut labour costs, only for the next AI investments to engender another round of layoffs. It sounds scary, but if you’ve tried Claude’s CoWork, you can see how it could become a reality sooner rather than later.
Wait, what about Lloyds?
The memo talks about “ghost GDP“. Yes, AI might increase output, but it’s not felt by ordinary people. It sounds reminiscent of the Engels Pause — a period during the Industrial Revolution in which real wage growth essentially froze for 50-60 years. What’s more, the loss of white-collar jobs could hurt the economy more than most imagine.
“Then it turned financial: income impairment hit mortgages, bank losses tightened credit, the wealth effect cracked, and the feedback loop sped up. And both of these have been exacerbated by an insufficient policy response from a government that seems, quite frankly, confused“, the memo states.
It’s also important to recognise that AI bots don’t do discretionary spending. In turn, this hits business and commercial loans. After all, consumer spending is a large part of Western economies.
My concern is that when this narrative becomes increasingly familiar to investors, the Lloyds share price could get choppy.
It might never happen
The good news is that this is all hypothetical. And policymakers have some time to protect white-collar jobs, and help people train for the future. What’s more, those hardest hit are likely to be entry-level workers — highly retrainable.
And in a scenario whereby AI causes moderate disruption but leads to productivity gains unseen since the Industrial Revolution, Lloyds could be a winner. This may even be the base case.
I have to be honest. My position in Lloyds is smaller than it used to be. But that’s equally a reflection on the valuation rather than the AI doomsday prediction. I still believe it’s worth considering, but like everything, it carries risk.
