My prediction for 2026 with respect to AI confidently included a proliferation of doomer content. At least the "Citrini scenario" didn't have AI causing nuclear war.

what was that other post? some dude on twitter wrote something to spook everyone and got a 100 million views, i dont remember

Discussion on the report:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47114579

> The scenario imagines every consumer deciding to use their own personal agent to transact and conduct business. This completely sidelines companies that monetise “friction” in the economy, such as travel and estate agencies that operate as middlemen in processes such as booking holidays or buying property.

The threat to the middleman businesses is their elimination. For that to happen, the service providers have to open up APIs for the users' agents' to use directly, so that then those agents effectively become the middlemen.

If that doesn't happen, then the user agents have to deal with the friction, and that works in favor of the middlemen because agents are willing to deal with much more friction than people.

In this scenario, only the rank-and-file friction workers and their management have to worry about being replaced by friction-generating AI; the business as such is safe.

The scenario seems broadly similar to one where efficient, low-cost foreign competitors undercut domestic firms and gain market share. Some domestic workers are out of a job either way.

It's not impossible but it will take time and is easier said than done.

Was writing software really the bottleneck, or are there others? Is Stripe really in that much better a position to compete with other payment rails now that there is AI? Or maybe a new competitor comes out of nowhere and a huge number of businesses switch? The scenario where markets become hyper-competitive because of AI seems a bit dubious.