The recent wave of layoff news has sparked fears of an AI-induced employment crisis, though the sectors with major losses reflect a .
“It appears far worse for the math people than the word people,” he said in a recently released clip from a 2024 interview.
He added that even in STEM fields not yet touched by AI automation, like healthcare, math skills will become less relevant as an entry hurdle.
“If you want to go to medical school, we filter people out via physics and calculus,” he said, adding that “I don’t really want someone operating on my brain to be doing prime number factorizations in their head while they’re operating on my brain.”
Fast forward to last month, when fintech firm announced a 40% reduction in its headcount, or about 4,000 jobs, and cited AI models as a primary reason.
Meanwhile, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan noted that AI allows the company to “do more with the same amount of people or less people.”
In an earnings call with Wall Street analysts in January, he suggested the bank isn’t cutting jobs but can still lower overall payroll.
“We can just choose not to hire and let the headcount drift down,” Moynihan explained.
Similarly, CEO Charlie Scharf stated that the bank is doing a lot more because of AI. Though there haven’t been any job cuts yet, he indicated it’s possible.
“There are other places where we’re going to be able to look at and figure out how we can do more with less people,” he said. “It’s not going to totally replace humans, but does create an opportunity to do things significantly differently.”
And in October, JPMorgan’s CFO said managers were told to avoid hiring as the bank implements AI.
In fact, JPMorgan has already deployed a large language model used by 150,000 employees weekly, and CEO Jamie Dimon acknowledged that productivity gains from AI could mean the bank will employ fewer people in the coming years.
Also in October, Goldman Sachs told employees in a memo that it would “constrain headcount growth” and lay off a limited number of employees.
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“To fully benefit from the promise of AI, we need greater speed and agility in all facets of our operations,” CEO David Solomon wrote. “This doesn’t just mean re-tooling our platforms. It means taking a front-to-back view of how we organize our people, make decisions, and think about productivity and efficiency.”
In recent weeks, and have made payroll cuts, though they didn’t cite AI. Outside the finance sector, slashed 4,000 customer-support roles last year due to AI, and laid off nearly 15% of its workforce to focus on AI-related roles.
To be sure, Wall Street is growing more skeptical about layoff announcements tied to AI, with some analysts saying the technology is being used as a cover to correct for massive over-hiring that was done during the pandemic.
But skills mastered by “word people” are in demand. released a study recently that found rising need for communications and creative thinking skills.
“Companies are increasingly looking for great communicators, because strong writing, clarity, and judgment still matter,” a spokesperson told . “On LinkedIn, we’ve seen job postings mentioning ‘storytellers’ double over the last year.”