Citrini says the emperor has no clothes

A doomsday AI report by Citrini is rocking global markets and crashing the share prices of IT services companies. It says the obvious, without pussyfooting, and insists that the emperor does not have new clothes.

 

Here’s a synopsis if you’re not up to reading 7000 words:

The first one -that AI will cause job losses – is quite obvious and worldwide tech hiring is already down. If our stock gurus rely on an article published on Substack for this information – and not their super fancy AI enabled algorithms that doesn’t bode well for the future of either AI or human intelligence. But here we are.

 

AI isn’t yet ready to handle every complex white-collar job. In fact, non-tech white-collar jobs showed a 3% year-over-year increase, according to the January 2026 edition of the Naukri JobSpeak Index released by Info Edge (India). But yes, salaries are stagnating and many jobs are work from home which impacts real estate (negative), fashion (more nighties, less shoes), food (eat in) and even the pet sector (when Sachin Tendulkar’s future daughter-in-law runs a pet spa, you know that this is a cool and rising business!).

 

If people don’t have jobs they obviously won’t be buying stuff or paying back loans or their insurance premiums and EMIs. They will also not require the huge support eco-system we currently have – no need to drive to work or shopping, no need for quick delivery, no need to live in a tech hub in a fancy apartment building etc.This trend is immediate, and businesses need to factor it in even if it plays out over a decade or so.

Way back in 2000 ecommerce was predicted to deliver perfect information to customers. No need to go search from shop to shop! You could do a single search and compare prices! Wow!

 

Platforms like makemytrip and booking.com emerged to make search easier for us humans. They did the heavy lifting that we found difficult. Same with real estate brokers and magicbricks.

 

In B2B procurement advisors like Gartner have helped mediate the mass of information for a fee for decades. They were not replaced by buyer communities as we once thought they would be, because they reduce friction in other ways too.

 

If as individuals we could find out which product was “best” for us, we wouldn’t need all these tools and they’d go bust is one possibility that the report points out. But these platforms also -by way of curation – deliver trust. That the product will perform as promised. If it is available on a certain platform someone has vetted it, and lending their brand to its promise.  And the platform will help if things go wrong.

This morning my gym hosted a promo for a D2C dairy brand, Sid’s Farm. I got upset because while the promoter said free when we entered, the “free” samples required me to download the app and add money to the wallet. But even without that friction, I would not like to use another app when the product or its equivalent is available on an aggregator site. If I had an automated basket that took care of buying directly from a company and took care of the logistics and vetting, yes, I would use that over the multiple aggregator apps I use for household shopping. There ought to be a race to be that trusted brand, but do you see the contenders? I don’t.

On my first trip to Europe I was shocked that people were casually paying 3 euros for a glass of Badoit water with a twist of lemon when free water was available and safe! It even called itself “carafe d’eau” which sounded way more sophisticated than “tap water”! Badoit clearly was more classy than tap.

 

I bought a Suzuki Invicto which is priced at a signficant discount to the Toyota Innova even though both are made in the same plant and are identical functionally. The Toyota has a waiting period – purely on the basis of its superior brand and service reputation.

 

As long as humans have spending power we will search for products that go beyond functional benefits. Even when we are downsizing – and many of us will have to – we will want the coolest, cheapest product so we feel less bad. In my circles “thrifted on Church Street” has a better sound than “Myntra” even when the brands and pricing is the same!

Yes, AI is going to make many jobs obsolete.  Will that cause other parts of the economy to seize up? Yes. Will it happen tomorrow? No. What happens next? Well, I’d advise you to read the predictions of Rodney Brooks. He’s been working in the general space of AI for around 50 years and plans to continue to track his predictions and their progress till he’s 95 🙂 How about that for a retirement plan!

 

Now, I am off to Bath and Body to sniff fragrances and choose an expensive hand-wash. My daughter and I believe strongly that Amazon just doesn’t deliver on that!

 

Last weekend we went to the https://www.thesixthsensefestival.com – very cool concept and I am so impressed that we have access to experiences like this! It gives me an idea of what humans will do if freed from labour.

 

Have a great weekend!