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Artificial intelligence has quickly become a tool many companies are looking to utilize in the coming years. According to Forbes, 64% of businesses believe that AI can help increase productivity — though many workers are afraid that its rising prevalence in the workplace could reduce the number of available jobs.
In late January at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Yahoo Finance’s Executive Editor Brian Sozzi asked a variety of economic leaders for their perspectives on AI’s place in the workforce — and they shared their wide-ranging takes on the Opening Bid podcast.
Here are some of the highlights.
Morgan Stanley CEO and chairman Ted Pick sees AI as a tool to take care of routine tasks, such as taking notes. But ultimately, it will not replace the human aspect that makes many businesses thrive.
“Yes, the AI is super important,” he said on Opening Bid. “It brings a ton of efficiency to the cost structure and [is] disruptive to the mainframe and that type of thing. You don’t need to write your notes because someone will spit it out. 20 hours of certain note debriefs is taken down by 80% … [but] we still need the human orderly. That’s never going to change.”
While AI may make certain day-to-day tasks easier to complete, he insisted that much of his business is relationship-driven.
“We talk about rigor, humility, and partnership, and if you don’t have a timeline of a relationship, nobody’s going to be all that impressed,” Pick said. “You worry about the little details. You may be off — you get a question wrong, you give advice [that] is not quite right — but you correct [it]. And you’re focused on that client over time.”
Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman also felt that AI’s biggest pull is going to be its ability to take care of more mundane tasks.
“AI can write those reports,” she said. “So you give them the facts and the AI can write the report. That just is a massive time savings. Same with other regulatory reporting. So there’s a lot … where the technology can be used to take out a lot of very boring, rote work.”
She also predicted that AI will be a particularly useful tool in curating recommendations for an individual’s investment portfolio and answering client questions.
“AI [will continue] to drive interesting ways to engage with investors using algorithm AI to make predictive decisions,” she said.
Economist Nouriel Roubini: AI will eventually replace many jobs
Economist Nouriel Roubini, also known as “Dr. Doom,” has a less optimistic outlook on AI’s future in business. Though many view it as a useful tool to help eliminate more mundane tasks, he believes AI’s rapid growth will quickly outpace job availability.
“There are two views,” Roubini, who is a professor emeritus at NYU’s Stern School of Business, said on Opening Bid. “One is that AI is going to be complementary to existing jobs, replacing some, but creating many new ones — jobs of the future. But then the other view is that over time, eventually many jobs are going to be replaced by AI. We’re not going to have enough jobs, and I think that over time, the latter view is going to be the correct one.”
He elaborated, saying that the “breakthrough integration between software and hardware” has made it so blue-collar and white-collar jobs will be easily replaced as AI progresses in its capability to learn and infer knowledge at a PhD level.
“It’s terrifying, but it’s happening in the next — literally — year or two,” Roubini said. “And that’s going to be even a bigger revolution, I think, than [generative] AI.”
“These technologies are capital intensive, high skill bias, and labor-saving,” he continued. “So if you own the machine or the capital that owns the machine, you’re going to do well. But if you’re a low-skilled or medium-skilled white-collar [or] blue-collar [worker], increasingly your job and income is going to be threatened by AI, and there’s not going to be enough jobs in the future.”
People walk past a sign promoting AI at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 17, 2024. (Andy Barton/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images) ·SOPA Images via Getty Images
Billionaire Ray Dalio reflects on AI and leadership lessons
The extent to which AI will disrupt work will ultimately depend on how it’s implemented in the workforce.
For investors and those watching key technological developments, “Opportunities in AI will come in applications … and who will use it,” investor and hedge fund manager Ray Dalio said. “It’s very much like the internet and the dot-com period.”
While Dalio didn’t comment directly on whether AI would disrupt the labor force, he reflected on some leadership lessons for creating effective organizations.
The most important thing is understanding how to bring together workers’ values, abilities, and skills, Dalio said.
“I want an idea meritocracy in which there is meaningful work and near meaningful relationships through radical truthfulness and radical transparency,” he said. “In other words, can I share with you what I think in a non-hierarchical way? Can you share with me what [you] think? And together, can we get at the best ideas?”
Three times each week, Yahoo Finance Executive Editor Brian Sozzi fields insight-filled conversations and chats with the biggest names in business and markets on Opening Bid. You can find more episodes on our video hub or watch on your preferred streaming service.
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