Wall Street is growing increasingly concerned about artificial intelligence's potential to render entire companies obsolete, not just displace workers. While economists typically dismiss fears of an AI-driven job apocalypse, history shows that major technological breakthroughs can devastate entire industries.

Anton Korinek of the University of Virginia suggests AI's impact could be 10 times larger than the internet revolution, affecting a much broader economic surface area. The productivity surge that followed the IT revolution of the 1990s eliminated travel agents, stockbrokers, classified advertising, and video rental stores.

Productivity data shows the US economy growing at 2.6% annually since 2023, more than double the previous decade's rate. Though economists debate AI's current contribution, most expect its impact to accelerate. The recent announcement that Anthropic's AI tool can modernize IBM's Cobol programming language sent IBM shares plunging the most in 25 years, before recovering.

Industries facing potential disruption include back-office services, content production, customer support, legal and financial analysis, and coding. Joseph Schumpeter's concept of "creative destruction" describes how technological progress inevitably destroys existing businesses while creating new ones. Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond President Tom Barkin recently noted this process has been happening for centuries as "part of the essence of capitalism."