- In today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady on what keeps a “Ghost GDP” scenario from becoming reality.
- The big leadership story: There may be a Ghost in the future economy, but for now there’s ‘betrayal,’ says KPMG’s top economist.
- The markets: European markets drop as Trump’s tariffs take effect at 10%.
- Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.
Good morning. What’s the prognosis for the economy if AI turns out to be fantastic for profits and disastrous for demand? That’s the
scenario explored in a viral essay titled “
The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis.” Co-authored by James Van Geelen, founder of analysis firm Citrini Research, and AI entrepreneur Alap Shah, it imagines a near-time future in which real wage growth collapses as white-collar workers lose jobs while owners of compute see their wealth explode, resulting in a “Ghost GDP: output that shows up in national accounts but never circulates through the real economy.” (Van Geelen
wrote that he spent 100 hours on the essay, a poignant metric, perhaps, in an era where AI could write up any scenario in seconds.)
There are plenty of predictions about AI’s economic impact,
good and
bad, for those who seek them out. There are also signals right now that indicate disruptive change is already happening:
a record gap between corporate profits and worker pay, staggering salaries at AI firms for
workers with analog skills, predictions of job loss in everything from
Uber drivers to
office work, and of course the recent
rout in tech stocks.
CEOs are not oblivious to these risks. Most are focused on using AI to redesign work and not just shrink headcount or grow profits. Cognizant CEO Ravi Kumar S, for one, is planning to hire about 25,000 junior workers this year, a 20% increase over 2025, as AI puts expertise in the hands of more junior talent. (For a deeper dive on his “Hollywood model” of hiring, check out
my recent interview with him.)
IBM is also
tripling the number of Gen Z entry-level jobs, as are others. That’s good news for those who worry about AI disrupting opportunities for the next generation of leaders, though it’s unclear how democratized expertise will impact skilled workers higher up the pyramid. IBM shares lost 13% of their value yesterday after Anthropic announced that its Claude Code tool can help modernize Cobol programming language that runs on IBM computers.
The economy is clearly shifting in ways that require business models to follow suit. Agentic commerce will undermine any model that relies on inertia, human friction, or inconvenience to survive. Machines have infinite time and patience to optimize costs, plan itineraries, recalibrate portfolios and eliminate overpriced subscriptions. If AI can spot a recurring source of cash flow that’s not delivering a return on investment for its user, it will eliminate it. That’s good for those who have money to spend.
While many of these trends could exacerbate a
K-shaped economy of increased wealth at the top and desperation at the bottom, another factor could alter that trajectory: politics. In democratic economies, however flawed, every consumer gets one vote. Declining tax revenue and expanding safety nets are not sustainable, nor is a wave of innovation that lifts a few boats while threatening most of the fleet. The need to create shared prosperity is growing more acute. Leaders who are deploying—and regulating—AI need to balance how much these new tools will save with how much they ultimately will cost. Otherwise, Van Geelan and Shah’s essay may look less like speculative fiction than a warning of what’s to come.
Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com
