- Citrini Research's 2028 AI crisis scenario predicts major disruption in global IT and economies
- Anand Mahindra has argued that AI won't replace IT firms but transform them into AI custodians
- AI will force IT firms to cut costs, shift to outcome-based billing, and redesign workforce models
Industries and investors have been rattled this week by Citrini Research's viral thought experiment, The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis — a fictional macro memo that imagines a future where ultra‑cheap, agentic AI coding wipes out white‑collar work and destabilises economies. Against this backdrop and rising alarm over India's IT future, Mahindra Group chair Anand Mahindra has stepped in with a sharply calibrated counter‑narrative.
Citrini's scenario, framed explicitly as a thought exercise and not a prediction sparked selloffs across sectors globally as markets attempted to price in its bleak vision.
In a detailed post on X, Mahindra acknowledged that markets “have been whipsawing in response to various AI scenarios, most recently the Citrini thought experiment,” which imagines a world where AI drives software‑production costs down to little more than the price of electricity. In the 2028 scenario, Indian IT majors see cancelled contracts, collapsing revenues, an eroding services surplus, and even the beginnings of IMF‑level economic strain — a storyline that aligns with the report's broader depiction of mass layoffs, “intelligence displacement,” and a global consumption collapse.
Calling the piece “a great thought exercise,” Mahindra invoked Mark Twain — “Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated” — to signal that India's IT sector is far from the obituary implied in some market reactions.
ALSO READ: AI Shock Scenario In 2028 Paints Nightmare Risks For Infosys, TCS, Wipro: Citrini Research
Mahindra's Counter And Alternate Scenario
Mahindra's argument rests on a more grounded, enterprise‑level view of AI adoption. Even if AI agents can write code faster, better and cheaper than humans, he argues, the real-world needs of large organisations do not disappear: secure data foundations, integration across legacy and cloud systems, governance, compliance, audit trails, and mission‑critical reliability.
Mahindra concedes that AI will reshape IT services: firms will need to cut costs, boost efficiency, redesign headcount models and shift from effort‑based billing to outcome‑based delivery. But he pushes back against the idea that AI will make service providers obsolete; instead, he suggests, it may make the best ones more central.
Coders To Custodians
In Mahindra's alternate scenario: the future belongs to firms that evolve from coders to AI orchestrators — companies capable of integrating, governing and scaling AI systems.
According to Mahindra, the new differentiator for IT giants won't be who supplies the most effort, but who can manage the risk and deliver "Scale at Speed." It is a fundamental shift from being software creators to software custodians. Firms that can orchestrate complex AI systems and guarantee outcomes will find themselves more indispensable than ever.
Mahindra does not deny the incoming pressure on the sector. He concedes that traditional IT services companies will be forced to slash cost structures, rethink their headcount-heavy models, and abandon the legacy "pure effort-based pricing" model. The days of billing by the hour for manual coding are numbered.
ALSO READ: Citrini Report Author Calls For AI Tax After Scare-Trade Selloff
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