According to former Goldman Sachs Chief Technology Officer Michael Dubno, the next five years will see AI significantly changing the role of workers in the finance sector. Dubno, who began the automatization process of Goldman Sachs, believes that even jobs in sales will be carried out by robots in the near future. This is due to the ability of machines to learn, a skill that they are close to performing better at than humans. This could leave employees jobless or searching for a new role.
Advances in Natural Language Processing
Until now, bank negotiations had to involve humans due to the tailored nature of credit deals. See this Finnish example to get an idea of the diversity of credit loan options. Beyond the traditional high street bank, there are now options to suit each unique circumstance. As a result, many have found employment as financial salespeople. However, computers are now able to scan emails and come up with the perfect figure based on an analysis of the language. Some banks even have robots listening in on phone calls and examining trades. Once this technology surpasses humans in terms of revenue generated, then there will be no incentive to continue hiring human staff in these roles.
Robots have long surpassed humans when it comes to number crunching. However, this is a very narrow form of intelligence. It is only recently that computer algorithms have been able to learn from mistakes, as a human does. This allows AI to form a more general intelligence, which can comprehend fluid and nuanced subjects such as language.
How Long Will This Take?
Dubno has predicted that all businesses will be heavily affected within the next 5-20 years. Since the financial industry is a data-heavy and profit driven sector, it is likely to feel the effects quicker than other industries.
While emotionally driven jobs, such as therapist, and opinion oriented jobs, such as politician, will possibly require human labor forever, the financial industry has a very different future. Financial services will always hire the most cost effective option as well as the option which produces the most revenue. This means that the financial industry will have to adapt fast to keep up with advances in AI.
Where Will Financial Employees Go?
This will be the big question on the lips of Wall Street workers following Dubno’s comments. The good news is that while robots take jobs, technology also creates new jobs. The exact form that these jobs will take is yet to be seen, but there is little evidence that advancement in technology necessarily increases unemployment.
There has been rapid technological advancement in the past, such as during the Industrial Revolution. Rather than simply remove jobs from the market, this advancement shifted the nature of work. Robots still lack emotional intelligence and creativity, so finance workers may find themselves doing more of this kind of work.
There is no doubt that AI is advancing quickly and that the finance industry should prepare itself accordingly. However, current finance workers needn’t be too worried. Robots depend on humans for their existence and when things go wrong, so the more robots there are, the more human supervisors there will need to be as well.
