Viral Energym parody highlights AI job displacement fears as blockchain platforms promote decentralized AI ownership
A dystopian "Energym" satire reminiscent of Black Mirror, depicting an 80% AI-driven job loss scenario, gains traction while technology firms execute mass layoffs and professional employment opportunities reach their lowest point in ten years.
Belgian creative studio AiCandy produced the viral footage, which features artificially aged depictions of tech titans Elon Musk, Sam Altman and Jeff Bezos promoting an imaginary fitness facility. In this fictional concept, displaced workers generate electricity by cycling and operating rowing equipment to fuel the same artificial intelligence infrastructure that eliminated their employment, exchanging their previous salaries for a renewed feeling of "purpose."
Energym's dystopia meets real AI layoffs
The satirical content resonates particularly strongly given the current wave of technology sector reorganization centered on artificial intelligence capabilities instead of human employees.
Jack Dorsey's payments company Block revealed on Friday that it would eliminate over 4,000 positions (representing nearly 40% of total staff), as part of an efficiency drive leveraging intelligence tools, combined with "smaller and flatter teams."
Recent employment statistics released by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics indicate that demand for certain white-collar positions has significantly declined. Job openings in the finance and insurance sectors dropped to 134 per month by December 2025, representing a 50% decrease compared to the previous year and establishing a decade-long low.
Financial market anxiety regarding the ultimate destination of this trend escalated during February following the release of a 7,000‑word projection from Citrini Research, an American firm specializing in analysis of "transformative" developments, which outlined a potential future characterized by AI agents, widespread workforce reductions, declining compensation, and a severe market collapse later in the current decade.
The analysis, presented as a scenario exploration rather than a definitive prediction, nonetheless triggered a selloff among software and payment processing equities, with corporations including Uber, American Express, and Mastercard experiencing declines ranging from 4% to 6% during a single trading session as market participants recalibrated their expectations regarding the speed at which AI might diminish the need for human workers.
Crypto-native agents as an alternative to "Energym?"
According to David Minarsch, CEO of Valory and founding member of Olas Network, a crypto protocol for co-owned AI agents, the Energym concept represents one potential trajectory if AI continues to be "built as black boxes" and controlled by a small number of centralized platforms.
He told Cointelegraph that accelerated AI integration was already transforming software engineering practices, with nearly all of his team's code currently being generated by AI under human oversight compared to predominantly human-written code just six months ago.
"If this trend accelerates," he said, we are on a path to a future that's caricatured in the Energym ad," contending that society was at a "pivotal inflection point."
Minarsch cautioned that a scenario in which AI agents receive something resembling personhood status and legal safeguards could irreversibly "disenfranchise humans" by transforming capital, instead of labor, into the primary factor of production.
He referenced AI research laboratories that characterize models as being "retired" as an initial stage toward recognizing systems as entities with their own interests.
Minarsch said that projects like Olas were betting that giving people direct ownership and control over AI agents, rather than renting them from platforms, could be one way to stop the Energym scenario from becoming a reality.