While workers are hand-wringing at the prospect of an algorithm taking their job, bosses are reassuring workers that AI is just like any other technological revolution. And Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon has just joined the chorus of executives excited about the change.
“Technology has been having an impact on headcount, the way people work, what workers you have, for decades and decades and decades,” Solomon recently said on CNBC’s Squawk Box. “One of the things that’s happening here that’s a little bit different, is this is going at a pace that’s quicker. Because the pace is so quick, I think there’s a possibility that there’s a little bit more volatility or an unsettled transition around certain job functions.”
This isn’t the first time certain jobs have been made redundant by new tech entering the workplace. But as Solomon pointed out, many also simply had makeovers. For example, 25 years ago at Goldman, the $225 billion bank didn’t have the huge cohort of 13,000 engineers it has today. And looking ahead, the chief executive predicted that the business’ mix of engineers and AI will continue to change again. However, he isn’t all doom and gloom on what that means for his employees, the company, and its clients.
“At the end of the day, we have an incredibly flexible, nimble economy. We have a great ability to adapt and adjust,” Solomon continued. “Yes, there will be job functions that shift and change…But I’m excited about it. If you take a three to five year view, it’s giving us more capacity to invest in our business.”
Fortune reached out to Goldman Sachs for comment.
CEOs contend AI is just another tech revolution
Goldman Sachs’ chief executive isn’t the only prominent business leader looking to leverage gains from AI. And despite some waving the red flag of a white-collar jobs armageddon, others contend that the shift will be just like any other technological change in the past—and something to embrace sooner rather than later.
“I can’t find a CEO that I’m talking to, in any industry, that is not focused on how they can reimagine and automate processes in their business to create operating efficiency and productivity,” Solomon said.
Earlier this year, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang said that the world is “at the beginning of an AI revolution,” and that he could even see the world shifting to a four-day workweek. But as productivity improves with the advanced tech, business leaders will only continue to drum up even more revolutionary ideas, which will require a constant flow of work from humans. How people do their jobs will change, but Huang doesn’t see AI creating mass unemployment or the need for humans to live off a universal high income.
“Every industrial revolution leads to some change in social behavior,” Huang said on Fox Business Network’s The Claman Countdown. “I have to admit that I’m afraid to say that we are going to be busier in the future than now.”
Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella is in agreement with Huang, and pointed to England’s Industrial Revolution as a prime example. The leader said the innovation caused a redistribution of labor—which he admitted is a “scary word”—but it ultimately resulted in the world changing its view on labor. The AI revolution will do just the same, Nadella said: it will trigger a societal challenge that can be solved with new work solutions.
The jobs already being displaced by AI: customer service and coders
The AI race is well underway, and human workers are already witnessing which jobs are under threat of automation.
Customer service jobs are already being rapidly displaced; earlier this year Salesforce cut 4,000 of the roles, and Klarna’s AI chatbot now does the work of 800 agents.
Entry-level Wall Street roles are at risk of automation, too. OpenAI just enlisted more than 100 former investment bankers to train its AI models to build financial models, which eventually could automate hours worth of young workers’ responsibilities. This move comes after predictions that junior analysts at financial institutions could be in danger of being made redundant by AI, according to a New York Times report from last year.
Other reports show that automation will be wide-reaching across a plethora of industries and professions. The jobs that are the most affected by generative AI include: interpreters and translators, historians, passenger attendants, sales representatives, writers, and telephone operators. Meanwhile, other roles may be sheltered from the storm, particularly blue-collar jobs like dredge operators, bridge and lock tenders, water treatment plant operators, and rail-track layers.
