About two months ago, an article made the rounds on X and in a lot of group chats: the “2028 Global Intelligence Crisis” from Citrini Research. I read it at 10pm in bed and was up late. It’s written as a fictional macro memo from June 2028 — a thought experiment, not a prediction — imagining how an AI-driven economic spiral unfolds.

It’s worth reading, even as entertainment like a dystopian future movie: The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis – Citrini Research 2-2026

The scenario goes like this: AI coding tools become so powerful that companies start building their own software instead of buying SaaS. Margins boom, stocks surge. Then white-collar layoffs accelerate. Former tech execs have to drive Uber. Displaced workers spend less. Companies invest even more in AI to compensate, displacing more workers. The authors call it the human intelligence displacement spiral — a feedback loop with no natural brake.

The collateral damage gets interesting from a marketing perspective. Consumer AI agents begin routing around brand loyalty entirely. DoorDash goes out of business because an agent finds a cheaper, faster option and the human never even makes the choice. Travel booking platforms collapse. The apps on your iPhone home screen — the ones you open out of habit — become irrelevant because the agent just picks the most efficient option. Brand familiarity, gone. Human decision-making, offloaded.

I don’t think this happens by 2028. But the thought experiment surfaces something real.

Where does brand live if agents are doing everything?

Here’s my answer: taste and POV.

When people do engage — on whatever social platforms exist, in whatever format we’re consuming content — the thing that cuts through will be the same thing that has always cut through. A distinct perspective. An opinion you can’t get from a search result. Humor that lands because it required context to write. Copy that works because someone knew not to use a certain word for a certain brand.

Most people using AI are still just prompting it cold. “You are an SEO expert. Write a page for me.” That’s 2023. That’s not how you get good output efficiently. Instead, you have to feed it everything: your bio, your goals, your clients, writing samples, your philosophy. Treat it like training a junior employee who showed up to school without a lunchbox or any context. I’m talking mainly about Projects in Claude. Load your foundational docs, brand voice, category playbook, sample posts, and everything in there once. Keep it updated. You will rarely have to prompt at the beginning of a chat session again.

Even then — even with a well-configured project and detailed context — it still needs a human to look at the output and say: that doesn’t land. That’s not funny. That word doesn’t belong in copy for a premium brand. That judgment call is not something you can prompt your way into. It’s built over years of doing the work or at least having great instincts which probably comes from simply being an avid reader and consumer of strong, clear writing.

POV is the moat. Taste is the moat.

The people I’m most concerned about aren’t the ones who’ve been doing this for fifteen years. It’s the younger people who may never get the junior roles — the marketing assistant, the junior copywriter, the entry-level position where you make mistakes and learn what works. If those roles disappear before that generation has developed a body of work, a perspective, a sense of discernment — that’s a real problem. Not just for them individually, but for the quality of everything downstream.

You have to write bad copy in your twenties. You have to make videos that get four views. You have to be in the room when something falls flat and understand why. That is what experience actually is. AI cannot shortcut it, and outsourcing your judgment to AI before you’ve developed it is how you end up with content that technically exists but doesn’t do anything.

I cover all of this in the latest episode of Voice Marketing. Listen below — and leave a comment on Spotify if you have thoughts. I read them.