White House economist dismisses Citrini AI risk report as 'science fiction'

By Mark Niquette and Matt Shirley

 

A top White House economist dubbed the weekend report about artificial intelligence risks that had roiled the stock market “science fiction.” 

The paper from Citrini Research imagines a 2028 world in which rapid advances in machine intelligence turbocharge productivity but render large swaths of human labor obsolete — sparking job losses, collapsing consumer spending and dragging down stock indexes like the S&P 500.

 

Pierre Yared, the acting chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said the paper violates basic economics to say that AI will destroy jobs because it’s so productive.

 

 

“The Citrini report is an interesting piece of science fiction — and I like science fiction,” Yared said in a brief interview after speaking at the National Association for Business Economics in Washington. “But I think that if you really look at it, and think long and hard about it, it violates some of the basic accounting in economics.”

 

Yared added, “AI can either be a groundbreaking innovation that increases production, increases income” and expenditure, “or it can be an innovation that ends up not delivering on its promise.”

 

The Nasdaq Composite index tumbled more than 1 per cent Monday as tech shares got hit by negative sentiment stemming from the Citrini Research release. The index recouped the loss Tuesday, and was up about 1 per cent as of 3:00 p.m. in New York.

 

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has often said that modern economic history shows that increases in investment are followed by increases in employment, and that he anticipates the same with AI. 

 

Earlier at the NABE conference, Yared said that “overall, the administration’s position on AI is to lean into it” and to ensure the US can “dominate” internationally. Shortly after he took office last year, President Donald Trump scrapped an AI policy established by predecessor Joe Biden that set safety and transparency requirements for AI developers.

 

“We certainly don’t want to prevent the build-out of the most incredible technology of our day with government overregulation,” Yared said. “But we want to make sure that it’s happening in a way that’s the least disruptive.”

 

He said he didn’t want to get ahead of Trump on exact ideas, “but the president is aware of this and there’s been lots and lots of discussions, too, in terms of trying to figure out how to make sure that all of this build-up can happen without hurting local communities unduly.”

 

The CEA economist, on leave from a Columbia Business School post, said it’s natural to think, as with any innovation, there’ll be “some volatility and some disruption.” He said he focuses on “what the research says” rather than “apocalyptic science fiction scenarios.”

 

Bessent and other top officials have hailed the investment surge in the field as a parallel to the 1990s internet and personal-computing boom, which underpinned that era’s strong growth, low unemployment and contained inflation.