Perhaps we can ask more precisely, is AD explicitly realized in AdS/CFT?
In my understanding, AD is only named by Banks, but has roots in arguments by Bekenstein. Let me give some references which state or use the idea is a powerful heuristic. The basic argument is given in the paper below by Smolin.
http://arxiv.org/abs/0910.3140
Beyond the Planck scale
Steven B. Giddings
"In the general ultraplanckian Gedanken experiment, the basic control parameters are the energy, and the impact parameter, b – after all, these are essential parameters in our high-energy experiments at real colliders. At E ≫MD, there are good reasons to believe that some important features of the scattering are given by a semiclassical picture. Classically, for sufficiently small impact parameter, one expects to produce a black hole, plus some radiation as this black hole “balds.” Quantum corrections discovered by Hawking tell us that the black hole then evaporates. So, we expect an initial state of two high-energy particles, and a final state approximated by Hawking radiation. ... The trouble is, this leads to an apparent paradox seemingly driving at the heart of the problem of reconciling quantum mechanics with gravity."
http://arxiv.org/abs/0908.0333
Lectures on String Theory
David Tong
"Firstly, there is a key difference between Fermi’s theory of the weak interaction and gravity. Fermi’s theory was unable to provide predictions for any scattering process at energies above sqrt(1/GF). In contrast, if we scatter two objects at extremely high energies in gravity — say, at energies E ≫ Mpl — then we know exactly what will happen: we form a big black hole. We don’t need quantum gravity to tell us this. Classical general relativity is sufficient. If we restrict attention to scattering, the crisis of non-renormalizability is not problematic at ultra-high energies. It’s troublesome only within a window of energies around the Planck scale."
http://arxiv.org/abs/0709.3555
A pedagogical explanation for the non-renormalizability of gravity
Assaf Shomer
"However, our experience with gravity has shown that once enough energy is concentrated in a given region a black hole will form. As far as our understanding goes, the high energy spectrum of GR is dominated by black holes. More technically, it is expected that in theories of gravity, black holes will provide the dominant contribution to the large energy asymptotics of the density of states as a function of the energy."
http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9510063
Structural Issues in Quantum Gravity
Chris Isham
"This has been emphasised recently by several people and goes back to an old remark of Bekenstein: any attempt to place a quantity of energy E in a spatial region with boundary area A—and such that E > √A—will cause a black hole to form, and this puts a natural upper bound on the value of the energy in the region (the argument is summarised nicely in a recent paper by Smolin)."
http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9508064
The Bekenstein Bound, Topological Quantum Field Theory and Pluralistic Quantum Field Theory
Lee Smolin
"This suggests that, ultimately, a quantum theory of gravity will not be formulated most simply as a theory of fields on a differential manifold representing the idealized-and apparently nonexistent-“points” of space and time. To put this another way, the space of fields-the basic configuration space of classical field theory-has been replaced in the quantum theory by abstract Hilbert spaces. At the same time, ordinary space, in these formulations, remains classical, as it remains the label space for the field observables. This perpetuates the idealization of arbitrarily resolvable space-time points, that the results of string theory, non-perturbative quantum gravity and semiclassical quantum gravity (through the Bekenstein bound) suggest we must give up."
