A Thought Exercise on a post-algorithm world as a response to the 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis.

The Intelligence Displacement Spiral is real but it’s not the whole story

The “2028 Global Intelligence Crisis” report captures my mid-term pessimism uncomfortably well.

AI is starting to disrupt incentive structures across the entire economy and once that loop starts compounding, nothing will stand in its way.

The core mechanism is what the report calls the human intelligence displacement spiral:

AI capabilities improve → companies need fewer workers → white-collar layoffs rise → displaced workers spend less → firms feel margin pressure → firms invest more in AI → AI capabilities improve.

If you zoom out, it’s not even “evil.” It’s simple game theory.

And one detail in the narrative hits especially hard: we overestimated the value of “human relationships” in a lot of white-collar work.

Turns out a meaningful portion of what we called “relationship-driven” was actually just friction with a friendly face, processes that existed mostly because of information asymmetry. AI collapses a lot of that friction, because the system now has perfect information, and everything happens algorithmically, human directed decision making is simply not needed.

And as AI advanced and more white-collar workers are going to get displaced, because the jobs they were used to are not going to exist anymore.

They move into lower-paying service sector work and gig platforms. Labor supply increases in those segments. Wages compress there too. The economic pressure spreads outward.

So yes: in the mid-term, this looks like chaos.

Because it describes an economy as if humans are just consumption units reacting to labor shocks. Entirely logical and unemotional reasoning beings.

Clearly, we’re not.

We have an innate need for connection, for recognition, for belonging, for meaning. And that doesn’t disappear just because AI gets better at writing emails and drafting contracts.

The Internet and the economy won’t die. It will fracture.

The economy described by the author in the report resembles the dead internet theory, which imagines an internet drowned in synthetic content, overtaken by bots, unusable for humans. Similarly, an economy that operates algorithmically at machine speed, way beyond human cognition.

I don’t think that’s what happens.

I think the economy, similar to the internet will fracture into two layers:

1. A machine layer Agents consuming and producing information at a speed beyond human comprehension. Agent-to-agent commerce. Algorithmic negotiation. Automated research and execution loops. Content created for machines, optimized for machines, and read by machines.
2. A human layer Smaller, slower, more intentional spaces where humans gather because we still want to connect to other humans. Not at scale. Not optimized. Not frictionless, but real.

This is the part the displacement narrative misses: humans don’t just seek efficiency. We seek each other. And we’re already seeing early signals of this shift.

Macro trend #1: demand for IRL experiences is growing

People are craving in-person experiences again, because it's nostalgic and as a correction to the world we’re moving towards.

When everything becomes digital, instant, and infinite, the scarce thing becomes presence. The value shifts from “access to information” to “access to people.” From “content” to “community.” From “audience” to “belonging.”

Demand for IRL experiences isn’t just vibes, it’s showing up in budgets and behavior. Mastercard found 9 in 10 Europeans planned to spend the same or more on experiences year-over-year, and by 2025 two-thirds were chasing ‘big’ bucket-list moments. Meanwhile, Eventbrite reports that more than half of attendees wanted to go to more events in 2024 than 2023, and its 2026 ‘reset to real’ data shows 89% actively want community-connecting events, with local formats like art walks seeing major attendance growth. Even macroeconomic data agrees: the BEA values the U.S. outdoor recreation economy at $88B, and consumption data for recreation services rebounded hard post-pandemic and remains elevated.

Macro trend #2: cynicism toward Capital-C Corporations

There’s a widening cultural fatigue with centralized monopolies and mass-manufactured sameness. A collective waking up to externalities: extractive platforms, algorithmic manipulation, privacy erosion, labor precarity, and the psychological cost of living inside programmed feeds.

We no longer trust the default institutions the way we used to. And when trust collapses at the macro level, it reappears at the micro level: in local businesses, creators, niche communities, tight networks, people you can actually hold accountable.

This is no longer anecdotal, it’s measurable. In the U.S., Gallup finds big business is viewed positively by just 37%, while small business sits at 95% favorability, a massive trust gap. And the suspicion isn’t abstract: 37% of Americans now say ‘big business’ is the greatest threat to the country’s future. On the platform side, Pew reports 78% believe social media companies hold too much political power, and 83% think censorship of viewpoints is likely, the public increasingly sees systems as manipulative rather than neutral. When trust collapses at the macro level, it reappears at the micro level: McKinsey finds many consumers prioritize local brands specifically to support domestic businesses.

My hypothesis: after mid-term chaos, we find long-term homeostasis through micro economies

In the long term, I think we move toward the rise of micro and hyper-local economies.

As white-collar work gets displaced and commoditized, many people will do what humans have always done in unstable eras: start small businesses that serve immediate needs.

Displaced white-collar workers aren’t only ‘looking for the next job', a nontrivial portion pivot into entrepreneurship. Which is increasingly a layoff response: Gusto reports the share of new founders who started because they (or their partner) lost a job jumped 67% in 2025. And when hiring tightens, more people build their own doors: business-formation data providers note business formations tend to rise as job markets contract.

In micro economics, money circulates on a smaller scale, commerce becomes more relational and value becomes less abstract.

Instead of faceless SaaS and anonymous marketplaces, we get tighter-knit ecosystems: service providers who are known, customers who are known, communities that are legible.

And yes, a lot of today’s “digital services” will become pure commodities. Margins will get crunched. Work that used to require teams becomes an API call. Entire categories turn into algorithmic transactions.

But here’s where it gets interesting. When everything commoditizes, it creates space for the opposite to matter again.

The things that cannot be commoditized become more visible, and more valuable. Care. Taste. Trust. Craft. Presence. Leadership. Belonging. Meaning. Attention.

The outcome: the meaning economy

No one dreamt of becoming a product manager at a FAANG. No one was born to streamline operational processes. No one's purpose in life is to optimize shareholder value. No child said, “I hope I grow up to increase quarterly retention by 20%.”

Humans were meant to create. To care for others. To build. To nurture. To tend.

In a strange way, AI is taking jobs we never wanted in the first place and forcing a reset.

It is not going to be painless or pretty, but potentially a reset that pushes us back toward something more human.

Because if the machine can do the mechanical parts, then the only durable human advantage is the thing we have avoided because it’s harder:

Find your calling.

Actually figure out what you’re here to do. Figure out how that creates value for others. Figure out who you want to serve. Figure out what kind of life you want to build.

Among the onslaught of AI advancements, layoff headlines, and the low-grade anxiety that seeps into every conversation, this might be the one move that doesn’t get obsoleted:

build a life around meaning, not leverage.

AI will disrupt jobs, industries, and entire operating models. But it won’t replace the core human need to live a life that feels like it matters, to yourself and to people around you.

And I think that’s where the real economy on the other side of this ends up: shaped around meaning, not just profit margins.

Short answer, no. I hope that AI tools will liberate us from the things that we don’t want to do, and never really wanted to do anyway, but had to because it’s all part of building and running a business. So that we have time and space to do the things that are higher leverage and more aligned with our interests and skills.

My goals with Axy is the following:

1. Automate away the business work of research, campaign execution and optimisation so that founders and marketers can focus bandwidth and energy on running more experiments and different ways of connecting with their audience and users. Because let’s face it, we all know that good marketing boils down to maximising velocity and surface of experiments, how many campaigns and channels you can test and learn from at the same time.
2. Do more with less. I used to operate as a consultant with a traditional agency model and monthly retainers that range from $10 - 50K / month. Before AI, you were paying for expertise and bandwidth to do the above without having to manage a team. The reality with AI is that the playing field is levelled. You can now access the expertise of seasoned CMOs like me through the logic that’s hard-coded into the tools we built without having to pay for my time. And at the same time, execute at the speed of a full stack marketing team without the overheads. The less money you spend on expertise and execution, the more you can spend on acquiring each customer.

My stance is simple: I am long term optimistic about AI because it will free us to do the things that are meaningful to us.