Fears of an AI-powered job apocalypse have been heightened by the recent wave of layoff announcements, while the industries experiencing significant losses are consistent with a prior warning from tech billionaire Peter Thiel.
In a recently unearthed audio from a 2024 interview, he stated, “It seems much worse for the math people than the word people.”
He continued by saying that math proficiency will become less of a barrier to entrance, especially in STEM fields like medicine that are currently unaffected by AI technology.
He said, “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. If you want to go to medical school, we weed out people through calculus and physics.”
Last month, the fintech company Block reported a 40% reduction in its workforce, or roughly 4,000 positions, citing AI models as the main cause.
AI enables the business to “do more with the same amount of people or less people,” according to Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan.
During a January earnings call with Wall Street investors, he implied that while the bank isn’t laying off employees, it can still decrease wages overall. “We can simply choose not to hire and allow the headcount to decline.” Moynihan described it.
In a similar vein, Charlie Scharf, CEO of Wells Fargo, stated in December that AI is enabling the bank to accomplish far more. He said that job layoffs are possible even though they haven’t happened yet.
“We’re going to be able to look at other places out there and figure out how we can do more with less people,” he stated. “It creates an opportunity to do things significantly differently, but it won’t completely replace humans.”
Additionally, JPMorgan’s CFO stated in October that managers have been instructed not to hire staff while the bank implements AI.
Indeed, JPMorgan has already implemented a large language model that is utilized by 150,000 workers every week, and CEO Jamie Dimon admitted that the bank may reduce its workforce in the years to come due to productivity benefits from AI.
Additionally, Goldman Sachs informed staff members in a message in October that it would “constrain headcount growth” and fire a certain number of workers.
CEO David Solomon stated, “We need greater speed and agility in all facets of our operations to fully benefit from the promise of AI.” This goes beyond simply re-tooling our platforms. It entails looking at how we manage our workforce, make choices, and consider efficiency and productivity from front to back.
Citigroup and Morgan Stanley have reduced personnel in recent weeks, but they did not mention AI. Outside of the finance industry, Pinterest cut off about 15% of its employees to concentrate on AI-related positions, and Salesforce eliminated 4,000 customer-support positions last year as a result of AI.
Indeed, Wall Street is becoming increasingly dubious of layoff announcements related to AI, with some analysts claiming the technology is being exploited as a pretext to make up for widespread overhiring during the pandemic.
However, “word people” have skills that are in high demand. According to a recent survey published by LinkedIn, the necessity for creative thinking and communication abilities is growing.
“Because strong writing, clarity, and judgment still matter, companies are increasingly looking for great communicators,” a LinkedIn representative told Fortune. “Over the past year, the number of job postings on LinkedIn mentioning “storytellers” has doubled.”
