From Investor's Business Daily, February 24:
JPMorgan Chase (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon said on Monday evening that AI jobs displacement "may happen "faster than we can adjust to" and advised the government to begin working with business to devise policies that can address the fallout. His comments came after JPMorgan stock, American Express (AXP) and other financial stocks sank as Citrini Research's fictional account of mass AI layoffs triggering a 2027 recession went viral.
"I'm not predicting it's going to be a problem," Dimon said, but nor did he suggest that AI jobs fears were overstated, as a questioner invited him to do. Dimon's comments on AI's job impact largely echoed those he made at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 21, when he said it was important for public policymakers to "have plans in place to make it work better if in fact it does something terrible."
AI Jobs Impact 'Thought Exercise'
As he did in Davos, Dimon envisioned the abrupt layoff of 2 million truck drivers replaced by autonomous trucks. "Should we as a society agree to that? I don't think so." That scenario is unlikely because of the capacity constraints in building large trucks, especially autonomous trucks, but the point of Dimon's "thought exercise" may be to make a government solution seem more clearly necessary than for AI jobs displacement of office workers.White-collar workers, considered more likely to be on the firing line due to generative AI advances, were the focus of Citrini's own thought exercise. The firm, which offers thematic and global macro trading ideas, penned an essay, which is set in 2028 and looks back on the doomsday scenario that transpired.
"It should have been clear all along that a single GPU cluster in North Dakota generating the output previously attributed to 10,000 white-collar workers in midtown Manhattan is more economic pandemic than economic panacea."
Dimon suggested that the U.S. should have an AI-era version of trade adjustment assistance, a program that, prior to its phaseout in 2022, provided funding and income support for retraining workers who lost jobs due to foreign competition.
Back to his truck-driver analogy, "Maybe you phase it (adoption) in over five years, and during that five years you have time to retire people, income assistance, relocate, retrain. But you have to have systems that actually work." Trade adjustment assistance, he said, "didn't work."
JPMorgan AI Job Cuts Coming?
On Monday, Dimon clarified his remark from Davos that JPMorgan would agree to defer layoffs at the government's behest "if we have to do that to save society." He said he wasn't talking about banning layoffs. In Davos, Dimon discussed the government providing an incentive for companies to defer layoffs and retrain workers.As far as JPMorgan's adoption of AI, Dimon has said he expects the bank will have fewer employees in five years. He said management couldn't bury their heads in the sand when competitors were lining up to take away its business.
Marianne Lake, CEO of JPMorgan Chase's consumer and community banking division, said last May that she expected headcount to trend down by about 10% over the next five years, even as the business grows by more than 25%.
Dimon noted on Monday that the company already has "huge redeployment plans" for workers displaced by AI. "We have to up that a little bit."....
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