They Know a Collapse is Coming! By Brian Simpson

I will discuss two provocative Medium articles from late 2024 and early 2025, then build a case for why AI could precipitate an economic collapse, weaving in supporting insights from Vox, AIBusiness.com, and the IMF. These pieces—"They Know a Collapse Is Coming" by Cliff Berg on Medium's Age of Awareness (December 8, 2024) and "AGI Is Upon Us At Last—And What That Will Mean" by the same author (January 23, 2025), Cliff Berg are here:

https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/they-know-a-collapse-is-coming-39a53e2ecd80

https://medium.com/@cliffberg/agi-is-upon-us-at-last-and-what-that-will-mean-fd8ab565fce4

AI as a juggernaut poised to upend society: advancing AI = economic collapse, the equation of the age!

Berg's 'They Know a Collapse Is Coming" sets a chilling scene: elites are bracing for a societal implosion driven by AI's relentless advance. He paints a world where AI's exponential growth—think Moore's Law on steroids—outstrips human control, slashing jobs across the board. Citing Carl Frey's estimate that 47 percent of U.S. jobs are automatable, Berg argues this isn't just truck drivers or cashiers; it's architects, accountants, even creative fields, as AI like Midjourney churns out art or code. He sees a "Great Displacement" looming, where wage-earners vanish, consumer spending—70 percent of GDP—dries up, and wealth pools among AI-owning titans. Elites, he suggests, are quietly prepping—stockpiling resources, eyeing bunkers—while the masses face a "collapse" of economic stability, possibly within a decade. It's not sci-fi; it's maths, he insists, driven by AI's ability to do "everything humans can, cheaper."

The follow-up, "AGI Is Upon Us At Last," doubles down as Berg declares artificial general intelligence (AGI)—AI that matches or exceeds human cognition—has arrived by January 2025. He points to xAI's breakthroughs and others, claiming AGI can now reason, adapt, and outthink us across domains, still a controversial claim. Economically, this is dynamite: AGI doesn't just automate tasks; it replaces entire professions overnight. Berg envisions a "singularity lite"—not a tech utopia, but a practical nightmare where firms ditch humans for AGI, cratering employment. He predicts a feedback loop: jobless workers cut spending, firms overproduce with AGI efficiency, and markets crash under unsold goods. Inequality skyrockets as trillionaires emerge, but the tax base erodes, leaving governments helpless. Collapse, he warns, could hit by 2030 if AGI scales unchecked.

Now, let's make the case for economic collapse, using these as the backbone and pulling in the other articles for support. Berg's vision hinges on AI's speed and scale—AGI, in particular, could gut jobs faster than societies adapt. If 47 percent of U.S. workers are sidelined, as Frey suggests, consumer demand implodes. The IMF's May 2024 piece, "Crisis Amplifier?" https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2024/05/30/sp053024-crisis-amplifier-how-to-prevent-ai-from-worsening-the-next-economic-downturn, backs this: AI-driven jobless recoveries—like post-2008, but worse—could spike unemployment to 30 percent in advanced economies, triggering loan defaults and bank failures. Berg's "Great Displacement" becomes a domino effect: no wages, no spending, no growth—just a hollowed-out middle class.

Financial markets amplify the risk. Berg's collapse scenario gets teeth from AIBusiness.com's November 2023 warning, "How AI Can Cause a Financial Crisis." https://aibusiness.com/responsible-ai/how-ai-could-cause-a-market-crash. If AGI powers trading, as Berg implies, and banks lean on a few models (say, from xAI or rivals), a glitch or misread signal—think AGI misjudging a recession—could spark a flash crash. SEC Chair Gary Gensler's fear of synchronised AI sell-offs aligns here: markets tank, credit freezes, and Berg's elite hoarders watch from afar as chaos unfolds. The IMF adds that AI dumping assets en masse could turn a dip into a fire sale, cratering firms and deepening the spiral.

Supply and demand could snap too. Berg's AGI-driven overproduction—cheaper goods, no buyers—echoes Vox's March 2024 caution in "How AI Could Explode the Economy." https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/24108787/ai-economic-growth-explosive-automation.

Vox notes bottlenecks: if AI masters tech but not childcare, automated sectors flood markets while others lag, crashing prices and jobs in tandem. The IMF warns of supply chain havoc if AGI forecasts, trained on pre-collapse data, misfire—think shortages piling onto unemployment. Berg's trillionaires might thrive, but the broader economy drowns in unsold inventory and debt.

Why collapse, not just disruption? Velocity and fragility. Berg's timeline—2030—matches Gensler's late-2020s crisis window, suggesting AI's pace outruns regulation or retraining. Vox's rosy "superexponential growth" flips dark here: efficiency without employment is a recipe for stagnation, not explosion. The IMF's strapped governments can't bail out a system where AGI erases tax bases, and Berg's elites won't foot the bill. Social unrest, hinted at in his bunker talk, could seal it—riots over inequality choke recovery.

At the best of times, the economy is a brittle web waiting to snap, but runaway AI puts this threat in a whole new light.

https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/they-know-a-collapse-is-coming-39a53e2ecd80

https://medium.com/@cliffberg/agi-is-upon-us-at-last-and-what-that-will-mean-fd8ab565fce4

"The CIO of Goldman Sachs has said that in the next year, companies at the forefront will begin to use AI agents as if they were employees — as team members with tasks to do.

He also pointed out that, as AI becomes embodied through robots that have AI brains, that the AIs will then "live in our world" and will develop their own experiences and develop the awareness of human situations — giving them human-like judgment.

Elon Musk and now Trump know this. In fact, I believe that they are anticipating a global economic collapse. And if so, then they realize that time is short for them to get ahead of the situation personally. Perhaps that is why Trump wasted no time creating cryptocurrencies in his first day in office — something that most would consider to be unethical, since it is an attempt to personally and directly profit from his new office. But who cares? — the world is going to collapse, so get as rich as possible now, so that when the fall comes, you are among the richest billionaires who can then buy up all of the natural resources and live in an AI-powered enclave, safe from the starving masses.

Perhaps that is why one of Trump's first actions was to revoke Biden's AI safety executive order.

A collapse is what is coming. Sam Altman said clearly that they "know how to create AGI" (human-level artificial intelligence). This came sooner than expected, and so it means that the collapse is coming sooner than expected.

When companies can use AI to do 90% of what humans do, why would they hire people?

They won't, except for the few remaining tasks that require human accountability; but those roles will migrate to partners and senior shareholders, and away from managers.

And then guess what happens? All those companies that ditched human workers for AI agents? They now have no customers, because no one has a job. No job, no income. No income, no purchases.

Economic collapse.

Musk and Trump know this.

They are preparing for their enclaves.

Update:

Some readers have lamented that this story "provides no evidence". It was purposefully written as a short story, because I want more people to read it to make more people aware of what is happening. For those who want a longer article (with references), I previously wrote this one: https://medium.com/@cliffberg/agi-is-upon-us-at-last-and-what-that-will-mean-fd8ab565fce4

Also, here are some references pertaining to the inexorable rise of AI:

On the continuously increasing capabilities of AI: https://ourworldindata.org/brief-history-of-ai

On progress in reasoning models — AI today is far ahead of where it was only two years ago: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00275-0

On the coming embodiment of AI in robots: https://www.techopedia.com/most-advanced-ai-powered-robots

On neuromorphic architectures, which reduce the power use of AI by a factor of tens of thousands and make it mobile and "unplugged": https://www.utsa.edu/today/2025/01/story/nature-article-neuromorphic-computing-systems.html

By the way, AI is not software. Yes, today it is written using software, but today's implementation is actually a computational graph, and the software is there to get the graph onto GPUs. Neural network AI is actually a set of interconnected virtual "neurons". A computational graph is used to calculate matrices that model the activation functions and inputs of arrays of virtual "neurons". Using neuromorphic chips, engineers are moving toward actual neural networks — and those do not run software. AI is not the next evolution of computers: AI is a move away from computers, to something that is much more brain-like.

Some readers have said that AI is confined to its virtual world, and cannot do physical labor. I would encourage those readers to read up on progress in robotics, especially where AI is being used to drive the robot.

Some readers also have questioned my personal knowledge on the subject. I am not an AI expert, but I have built AI systems (from scratch), and I collaborate with people who are AI experts. In addition, Jeff Hinton, the "father of AI", has been sounding the alarm on AI: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65452940

Interestingly, one of the other "fathers of AI", Yann Le Cun, says not to worry: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65886125

But among experts, Le Cun seems to be in a decreasing minority.

Finally, many readers have said that all this is decades away. I am sorry to be the bringer of bad news, but it is not decades away. Look at the curves in my reference on the continuously increasing capabilities of AI.

Ray Kurtzweil has been warning us for decades, and predicted all this would happen by 2040; it seems we are ahead of schedule, perhaps because of the huge investment flow into AI. Among the first to mention the "singularity" was Vernor Vinge, a professor of mathematics at San Diego State University, and he predicted it would occur between 2005 and 2030.

It seems that Vinge might have been spot on."