Investor Says We’re Fast Approaching Point Where Economic Systems Will Collapse Under Weight Of AI

At this point, the parade of doomsayers announcing the collapse of the AI ​​bubble is almost endless.

Renowned financial commentators like Harris Kupperman have warned that data center investments are unsustainable, economists like Michael Roberts have called AI “the biggest economic bet in U.S. history,” and even the International Monetary Fund has begun to worry that the global economy is on a knife edge.

But in the AI ​​gold rush, the rich and powerful continue to pour money into AI and related industries anyway.

Today, crypto investor and financial media guru Raoul Pal is warning of his own kind of apocalyptic end to AI — but a day when an AI takeover, not a bursting bubble, brings the conventional economy to its knees.

“The next four years are going to be very different from anything we’ve ever experienced,” Pal wrote in a post on X-formerly-Twitter.

The post is purely self-promotional – it appears alongside an excerpt from the finance specialist’s podcast “When Shift Happens”, and is followed by a link to purchase his book, “The Everything Code” – but despite this, Pal is making bold claims to his 1.5 million followers.

“Your salaries have not kept up with the cost of living for years,” he exclaims. “Governments have to continue to devalue the currency to finance everything, and this eats into your salary every year. This element is not new.”

“What’s new,” Pal continues, “is that we have perhaps four years before the world as we know it stops working the way it does now. Exponential technologies…AI, robotics, energy, cryptography…are evolving so fast that the systems built for the old world can’t keep up.”

Ultimately, according to Pal, the development of these industries will lead to an economy in which the average person “can no longer trust what they see or hear.”

“Even the idea of ​​running a business doesn’t have the same meaning today,” he says – a moment he calls the “economic singularity.”

As the saying goes, strong claims require even stronger evidence. As bold as Pal’s prophecies are, they are based on vague observations of the world taken as gospel.

Persistent inflation, for example – which appears to be the foundation of Pal’s metaphysical theory – is not a new phenomenon, and the crypto investor is far from the first to observe it. As economist Richard Wolff observed in 2022, inflationary pressures are a long-standing feature of capitalism, not a harbinger of the end times.

As for whether macroeconomic conditions will change dramatically in four years, that very well could be the case, but the same could probably be said for 2004 compared to 2008, or for 2016 compared to 2020. These times of severe economic crises changed things radically for the working class, but the structures of capitalism survived.

Pal’s arrival as one of many omens at a time of severe financial hardship for millions is no coincidence – he is an oracle for people who desperately need order in an economic chaos.

Learn more about AI: Prominent Economist Says AI Has Brought ‘Zero Financial Gain’ to Non-Tech Companies