**["Humans Are the New Horses": Citadel's Internal AI Reduces Financial PhD Research from Months to Hours]** According to monitoring by 动察 Beating, the hedge fund Citadel is experiencing firsthand the brutal replacement of high-intelligence roles by AI within the company. Founder and CEO Ken Griffin confirmed at the 2026 Stanford Leadership Forum that advanced investment research tasks, which previously required weeks or even months of effort from financial master's and PhD holders, are now being completed in bulk by internally deployed AI agents within hours or days. This is not a routine efficiency boost targeting mid-level white-collar workers but a direct displacement of highly skilled intellectual labor. Griffin admitted that witnessing the rapid automation of core research roles by machines left him feeling depressed as he left work one Friday. He directly borrowed historian Niall Ferguson's chilling assertion to describe this upheaval: "In the world of AI, humans are like the horses replaced by cars." Destruction comes hand in hand with the dismantling of old structures. Griffin explicitly pointed out that the competitive moats long relied upon by large corporations are being rapidly leveled by various AI tools. This has directly transformed the current market into a dreamland for entrepreneurs, with the barriers for small teams to challenge industry giants now at an all-time low. [Original Link]