This story is part of our Chief Innovation Officer Forecast series with Gizmodo, a business report from the front lines of the future.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon sees artificial intelligence as one of the most potentially transformative inventions of the last several hundred years.
In his highly-anticipated annual letter to shareholders, Dimon likened the “extraordinary and possibly transformational” consequences of AI to that of the “printing press, the steam engine, electricity, computing and the Internet, among others.” But it’s too early to know just how big — or fast — these changes will come, he said.
Despite the relative novelty of AI, JPMorgan has already established itself as a leader in the space. For two consecutive years the bank has come in first in the new Evident AI Index, a first-of-its-kind ranking of world’s top banks’ standing in incorporating and advancing AI. The index assesses the AI maturity of 50 of the world’s largest banks with at least $200 billion in total assets.
The bank has grown its “AI organization materially,” Dimon said, and now includes more than 2,000 AI and machine learning (ML) experts and data scientists — more than double the 900 Dimon reported last year. It has more than 400 use cases in production across areas including marketing, fraud, and risk, Dimon said, and is exploring further use of generative AI in its software engineering and customer service practices.
“Over time, we anticipate that our use of AI has the potential to augment virtually every job, as well as impact our workforce composition,” he wrote. “It may reduce certain job categories or roles, but it may create others as well. As we have in the past, we will aggressively retrain and redeploy our talent to make sure we are taking care of our employees if they are affected by this trend.”
The largest U.S. bank by assets also created a new position, a Chief Data & Analytics Officer, that sits on its operating committee and reports directly to Dimon and COO Daniel Pinto. Dimon said that appointment “reflects how critical this function will be going forward and how seriously we expect AI to influence our business.”
While he acknowledged that AI comes with challenges, he said JPMorgan has a strong framework to stay ahead of AI-related risks and will continue to work with regulators as new AI regulations arise. He also said the bank has incorporated AI into its tools to counter threats from bad actors.