Jamie Dimon has weighed in after a fellow bank chief’s comments about AI-driven job losses sparked backlash — and signaled he’ll take care of his employees who are displaced by the emerging technology.
On Tuesday, Standard Chartered CEO Bill Winters described a planned reduction in support staff as “replacing in some cases lower-value human capital with the financial capital and the investment we’re putting in.”
After facing swift criticism online for his choice of words, Winters clarified his comments in an internal memo on Wednesday that was seen by Business Insider and confirmed by a spokesperson.
Winters wrote that “where roles do fall away, it reflects changes in the work, not the value of our people.”
Dimon told Bloomberg at JPMorgan’s China Summit in Shanghai on Thursday that Winters — who worked at JPMorgan for 26 years, rising to become co-CEO of its investment bank — could have phrased his comment more carefully.
“Bill’s a friend of mine and all of us say something incorrectly,” the JPMorgan CEO said. “It was an inartful way to say something.”
The billionaire banker added that he believes AI won’t just disrupt less-skilled workers. “Every app, every process, every job will be affected,” he said.
He described how the tech is transforming several parts of JPMorgan’s business, from marketing to fraud detection to hedging and document management, and said that was just the “tip of the iceberg.”
Dimon struck a reassuring tone about the prospect of large-scale job losses at JPMorgan.
“We’re going to be prepared to say, ‘Okay, we love these people, they’re great, we’re going to take care of them. We’re going to give them reskilling, new skills, better jobs, move them somewhere else, maybe early retirement,'” he said.
Dimon said it was “incumbent” on society as a whole to be ready if AI triggers mass job losses. He suggested that high schools and colleges could partner with local businesses to provide training courses that equip students with practical skills and the promise of a job upon graduation.
“There are going to be 8 million trade jobs, which pay $100,000 a year, available in the United States in the next five years,” Dimon said.
Dimon has been describing AI as a game-changing technology for a while. Earlier this year, he told CBS that it could shrink the working week to 3.5 days over the next 30 years, cure cancers, make planes and cars safer, and enable people to spend more time hiking and enjoying their hobbies.
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