Bankers Publicly Embracing Robots Are Privately Fearing Job Cuts (bloomberg.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Within the upper echelons of many financial firms, there's a lot of soul searching as executives prepare to roll out a new generation of technology. Publicly, they're upbeat, predicting machines will perform almost all repetitive tasks, freeing humans to focus on more valuable pursuits. Privately, many confide to peers, consultants and sometimes journalists that they're worried about what will happen to their staffs -- and what to tell them. There's also uncertainty. Maybe it's all overblown, executives say, because the tech will be hard to implement and humans will find new roles. Or perhaps it's the beginning of the end for legions of professionals in one of the world's most lucrative fields. Can jobs held by office-dwelling millionaires disappear like those on factory floors? The result, is that employees aren't getting a clear message on what's to come.

For a rosy scenario, look to McKinsey & Co. In July, the consulting firm published a report estimating machines are ready to assume roughly a third of the work now performed by banks' rank and file. The authors framed it as positive: People will have more time to tend to clients, conduct research or brainstorm ideas. So far, it noted, firms at the forefront aren't slashing jobs. At JPMorgan Chase & Co., one of the most tech-savvy banks, Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon predicted in June that his workforce will more likely grow than shrink over the next 20 years. Technology may displace workers, he's said, but it also creates opportunities. Yet in interviews, about a dozen Wall Street executives and consultants responsible for deploying technologies -- and steeped in their capabilities -- were more bearish on humans. Machines will take over task after task, they said, and banks simply won't need nearly as many people.

Comments

Leverage that GO playing AI

[Neo-Rio-101]

All one needs to do is leverage that GO playing AI to trade the financial forex and commodities markets.
Once it figures out how those markets routinely move - AND THEY WILL (because the "business model" that runs them simply doesn't change - evidenced by Wall Street millionaires), then all one has to do is keep a server running and exploit the market for millions at a time while it makes automated trades.

I'm not even talking about HFT trading. I'm talking about standard swing trading.
Of course the only possible downside to this is EVERYBODY having an AI that can do this, and then the system will likely come crashing down, or become as volatile as BitCoin - with the key difference that it will affect actual world economies.

Re: We all know this is comming

[lessthan]

And instead, our productivity went up. We had more time to do more work. It is not a great trade.

Re: We all know this is comming

[ichimunki]

Nobody is having children to game the tax system. Once they have the children, perhaps, they are happy to use them as tools to "game" the tax system. However, the tax system was set up to be gamed by people having children. One reason we need all these children is that Social Security is basically a Ponzi scheme. It requires a growing pool of people paying in to cover those being paid out, at least until an equilibrium is reached. Inflation can help offset the number of payers needed a bit, except that then people want cost-of-living adjustments to their payments so the value of their payments doesn't decrease as they age. Of course, there are probably other, better ways to increase the pool of potential payers-in than having children... like letting people immigrate and become citizens. This routinely avoids the need to subsidize those people's first two decades in life with schooling and the like. But this probably won't stop most people from having children, too. It's like it's some sort of basic human drive.