The viral Citrini report, titled “The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis,” has certainly stirred the pot. It reads like a dispatch from a dark future where the Indian economy collapses because AI agents can code for the price of a lightbulb, and global IT stocks tumble alongside, triggering ripple effects across markets worldwide. But if you look at the pushback from some top tech leaders and investors, the research paper reads more like a scary bedtime story than a perfect analysis, with them pointing out ‘bugs’ in the doomsday logic.
The report claims that TCS, Infosys and Wipro saw contract cancellations accelerate through 2027. The rupee fell 18% against the dollar in four months as the services surplus that had anchored India’s external accounts evaporated.
It concludes by saying – “We are certain some of these scenarios won’t materialiSe. We’re equally certain that machine intelligence will continue to accelerate. The premium on human intelligence will narrow.”
In summary, it draws a picture of the world in 2028 where white collar jobs have been decimated by AI agents, leading to a slowdown in consumer spending and triggering a recession. It specifically writes an obit of the Indian IT sector, claiming it will see contract cancellations, leading to slowdown of Indian rupee and fall of Indian economy.
But the words have triggered an hornet’s nest among those who feel the fundamentals of Indian IT are way stronger than to be displaced by robots.
The ‘horse fallacy’: Why humans aren’t obsolete
One of the biggest mistakes in the “AI will destroy us” argument is what investors call the Horse Fallacy. The idea comes from what happened when cars replaced horses. Horses lost their jobs because they could only pull weight. But humans are not horses.
American investor, Marcelo P Lima explains how humans create demand. In a long X, post he described, how every time technology solves one problem, we don’t just stop, we create ten new problems to solve. Sure, today AI might automate a basic website. But tomorrow, those same hands will be building virtual worlds or running clean energy grids. As a species, our to-do list never ends.
“Citrini models incomes collapsing but doesn’t model the massive deflation in the cost of living. If AI makes all these white collar workers unnecessary, this means that the price of products and services will be much lower (since much less labor is needed). You’d have a scenario where a household earning $40k per year could consume what previously took $120k per year,” he wrote. “And there’s all this mysterious wealth accumulated by the owners of the GPUs and what are they spending it on? How can there simultaneously be massive wealth and mass layoffs? Will there be new jobs invented? Quite likely.”
Citrini’s piece is a fun read but has some major flaws.
— Marcelo P. Lima (@MarceloLima) February 23, 2026
I’ll go over a few of them: lump of labor fallacy, ignoring the cost of living, capex fallacy, and wrong on SaaS.
The overarching problem in the piece is the so-called “Horse Fallacy.” When the tractor and car were… pic.twitter.com/jqFnR78jWc
The AI doomsday story that always sells
Founder of Capital Mind, Deepak Shenoy points out that this isn’t the first time people have panicked. In 2008, there was a big fear that the world was running out of oil and the global economy would collapse.
It didn’t. “Even if you bought that argument and bet on solar, wind and what not, the truth is that oil companies still make money, and oil still employs people, and probably will for way beyond what we think is a limit. Doomsday porn is addictive. AI based end of everything is the wwf of the world now, fun to watch but is mostly fake. Maybe the money is in the show, not the story they tell you.,” he wrote.
Entrepreneurs built India’s IT success
According to Indian investors and authors like Kushal Bhagia and Navroop Singh, a lot of people misunderstand India’s tech rise. It’s not just about cheap labor. If that were true, any low-wage country could have done the same. The real story is entrepreneurship and trust. Despite reports predicting the end of IT services, India in 2026 is showing a major shift.
“India’s IT industry didn’t just happen because Indian engineers were cheaper. It happened because entrepreneurs like Murthy, Premji, Nilekani and others made it happen. They trained millions of people, built trust with enterprise clients, and created a system that works,” Bhagia wrote. He added that India’s engineers, now armed with AI, could create an even bigger impact in the next wave of innovation.
“Very fatalistic view of India ! Indian IT Services would be hit but then GCCs are absorbing those jobs. India now houses more than 50% of Global Capability Centers with skilled workforce training in AI & Other processes ! Further knowing Software services hiring in IT industry will slow down, India is already pivoting towards IR 4.0 (Industrial Revolution 4.0) in Manufacturing, Industries, Electronics, AI & Data Centers,” Singh who authored books like the Great Reset and The New Global Order wrote on X.
Investors like Karan Rajpal highlighted that India’s IT sector is more than just a forex earner—it supports disposable income, drives downstream industries, and underpins the broader economy. “Downstream impact will be brutal if IT collapses, and affordability would crumble across sectors,” he warned, arguing that Citrini’s scenario ignores these interconnections.
Ajay Rotti, Founder & CEO, Tax Compaas, emphasised humanity’s track record of thriving amid technological disruption. “From fire to automobiles to the internet to AI, many roles vanished, yet we adapted, created more, and created better,” he wrote.”
AI will generate more jobs
Forget the Citrini research. With AI already spooking the industry, many Indian tech leaders made their position clear at the India AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi. Infosys chairman Nandan Nilekani said AI isn’t here to kill jobs but to make people more productive. He explained that engineers will use AI to tackle more complex problems, rather than just repeat old tasks.
Other leaders at the summit added that new jobs are already emerging in areas like AI engineering, data science, automation, and digital systems.
Wipro’s Rishad Premji argues that India is becoming the “AI Talent Destination” of the world. He expects India’s AI workforce to double by 2027, reaching over 1.3 million professionals.
Salil Parekh of Infosys remined investors that the global tech services market is a $1.5 trillion giant. Even if AI compresses some areas, it opens up a $400 billion AI-first services market by 2030.