IBM Stock Crash, Anthropic’s Claude Code and the ‘Ghost GDP’ AI Doom Loop: Why a 2028 Intelligence Crisis Is Unlikely | – The Times of India

IBM Stock Crash, Anthropic’s Claude Code and the ‘Ghost GDP’ AI Doom Loop: Why a 2028 Intelligence Crisis Is Unlikely | – The Times of India

By TOI Tech Desk
Publication Date: 2026-02-24 14:26:00

Markets were rattled after a report projected a 2028 worldwide intelligence crisis, claiming AI would decimate professional roles and spark economic freefall, leading to a steep drop in IBM’s share price. Yet many specialists dispute this doomsday timeline, arguing that AI’s impact will unfold more gradually, with outcomes depending significantly on how policymakers manage labor, regulation, and innovation.

On February 23, markets appeared to momentarily price in the kind of future imagined in Citrini Research’s THE 2028 GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE CRISIS. Shares of International Business Machines(IBM) plunged 13.2% – their steepest daily drop since October 18, 2000. This pluge happened after AI startup Anthropic suggested its Claude Code tool could help modernize legacy COBOL systems running on IBM mainframes.Reuters reported that COBOL, a programming language widely used across banking, insurance and government systems, could be transformed by AI automation. Anthropic wrote:…