‘Society needs radical restructuring’: AI hates the grind of hard work as much as you

The remarkable turn in markets and the narrative around artificial intelligence (AI) adoption is turning, frankly, a bit spooky in early 2026. Citrini Research’s widely read AI doomsday essay coined the phrase “ghost GDP,” with predictions of an almost supernaturally hollowed-out white-collar workforce. But what if AI’s “ghost in the machine” is a slacker, even a Marxist?

That’s the direct question asked by academics Alex Imas, Andy Hall and Jeremy Nguyen (a PhD who has a side hustle as a screenwriter for Disney+).