According to Woofun AI, Apollo Group's chief economist Torsten Slok issued a severe warning that Meta's (META.US) AI agent Muse could potentially trigger a new type of bank run crisis against traditional banking through automated fund allocation.

Slok pointed out that such agents have moved beyond being simple information Q&A tools and evolved into assistants capable of executing complex financial operations on behalf of users. Once this technology is widely adopted, the low-cost deposit base that banks rely on for survival will face complete disintegration, posing a serious challenge to the stability of the entire financial system.

The underlying reason lies in the combination of enormous interest rate spread incentives and automated execution capabilities. Currently, data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) shows that the national average interest rate for checking accounts is only 0.1%, while the average savings account rate is also as low as 0.4%. In comparison, there are numerous high-yield alternatives available in the market.

Slok listed 11 fintech products and online bank accounts with yields ranging from 3.3% to 5%, among which Adelfi offers up to 5% yield, followed by SoFi (SOFI.US) at 4.5%. Data compiled by Woofun AI shows that this rate spread is highly attractive to ordinary depositors: for example, with a $10,000 deposit, keeping it in a checking account at 0.1% interest yields only about $10 annually; if transferred to an account at 5% interest, the annual return jumps to approximately $500.

The core logic of bank profitability is precisely the interest rate spread formed by absorbing deposits at low rates and issuing loans at high rates. However, if every household uses AI agents to optimize cash asset yields, banks will lose the low-cost funding source for lending, and this structural imbalance will undoubtedly bring serious problems to the financial system.

It is noteworthy that market reaction and technology deployment are accelerating this process. Meta (META.US) officially launched Muse on September 8, with data services company Plaid responsible for connecting it to over 12,000 U.S. financial institutions and applications. Plaid stated that users can view account balances, transaction records, investment situations, and mortgage details through the agent. Although it did not explicitly state whether cross-account transfer functionality is available, Slok firmly believes that such fund transfers "will happen soon."

JPMorgan Chase (JPM.US) raised its target price for Meta (META.US) on Thursday, believing that Muse is expected to become the most widely adopted consumer-level AI application after ChatGPT. Industry views also confirm this trend. Chartered Financial Analyst Mike Zaccardi has already deposited cash into the BOXX ETF, which aims to track short-term U.S. Treasury bond yields, and warned that if everyone starts using such AI assistants to automatically transfer funds from 0.1% checking accounts to 5% high-yield accounts, banks will lose their low-cost deposit base, thereby triggering a financial system crisis.

Nate Geraci, co-founder of the ETF Institute, further pointed out that artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency together pose a threat to the traditional banking model, and politicians should proactively embrace rather than resist this irreversible technological transformation.

Policy-level uncertainty has intensified market anxiety. Washington is engaged in a fierce debate over who has the authority to determine deposit interest rates, with the focus on the attempted revival of the Clarity Act, which failed in a Senate procedural vote on September 15, with the stablecoin yield issue becoming the core of the controversy.

Although Slok's report did not provide specific estimates of the scale or speed of fund transfers, the logical chain it reveals clearly indicates that technology-driven fund optimization is reshaping the underlying logic of the banking industry. This is another structural challenge to the liability side of banks from artificial intelligence, following cryptocurrency's impact on traditional payment systems, and its ultimate impact depends on the game between regulatory response speed and technology penetration rate.