AI’s Threat to Entire Firms Is Driving the New Scare Trade (1)

A new worry is rippling across the stock market lately: entire businesses, not just their employees, may be thrown out of work. While most economists say fears of an AI job apocalypse are overblown, seismic shifts have happened in the past after big tech breakthroughs.

The IT revolution of the 1990s led to a surge in productivity that sped up the US economy for several years. It also rendered companies or even industries largely redundant — from travel agents and stockbrokers to classified advertising and newspapers, or video rental stores.

Blockbuster Video, once a brick-and-mortar stalwart, has all but disappeared — driven out of business by the internet.

Photographer: Tim Boyle/Bloomberg

Economists expect artificial intelligence will deliver higher productivity, which ...