With the whole world turning its attention to artificial intelligence, Wall Street heavyweight Jamie Dimon has finally entered the chat.
Specifically, whether our robot overlords will ever take our jobs.
His thoughts?
“Technology always replaces jobs,” he told Bloomberg, adding that AI will come in a ton of different forms. “It might be as a co-pilot or it might be to replace humans.”
For some, it’s a harsh reality; but for Dimon it’s simply a sign of the times. The tools and language models are already being deployed at JP Morgen, he said, helping the banking giant do its equity hedging, for example.
It’s more than a job-taking bogeyman too, Dimon said. He proffers several key advantages, much like any new technology.
“People have to take a deep breath,” said the JP Morgan CEO. “Your children are going to live to 100 and not have cancer because of technology. And literally, they’ll probably be working three-and-a-half days a week.”
Employees at the bank are already turning to the technology to augment their work and JP Morgan will look to “redeploy people” if AI suppresses more jobs.
Still, that's not all he recognized that there might be some setbacks but emphasized that they should be seen as part of the package.
“Technology has done unbelievable things for mankind, but planes crash, pharmaceuticals get misused, there are negatives,” he said. “The biggest negative in my view is AI being used by bad people to do bad things."
From crypto to AI, and back again
Despite his high praise for AI, Dimon has been far less enthusiastic about the leading cryptocurrency.
On several occasions, he stated that, in his view, cryptocurrencies are "decentralized Ponzi schemes," and that Bitcoin is "worthless."
He has, however, waxed poetic about the promise of blockchain technology and the future of decentralized finance, otherwise known as DeFi.
"Decentralized finance and blockchain are real, new technologies that can be deployed in both public and private fashion, permissioned or not," Dimon said, before adding that JPMorgan is "at the forefront" of these innovations in a 2022 letter to shareholders.