All New Employees Will Receive AI Training

At JPMorgan Chase, getting trained in artificial intelligence is now part of being hired.

The banking giant is having all new hires undergo artificial intelligence (AI) training, Mary Erdoes, who runs the firm’s asset- and wealth-management unit, said Monday (May 20).

“This year, everyone coming in here will have prompt engineering training to get them ready for the AI of the future,” said Erdoes, whose comments at JPMorgan’s investor day were reported by Bloomberg News.

She said AI is helping her unit in two ways: improving revenue growth and saving time. There’s less focus on “hunting and pecking,” she said, as bankers can now pull up certain information on potential investments while clients are on the phone.

In addition, AI is doing away with “no joy work” by getting rid of rote tasks and saving some analysts two to four hours of their workdays, Erdoes said.

JPMorgan President Daniel Pinto told the audience that the bank sees AI as worth between $1 billion and $1.5 billion, and that the technology will have a “very, very” large impact for the firm’s 60,000 developers and 80,000 operations and call-center employees — close to half the company.

Also Monday, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said the bank was “well on the way” with its plans to someday replace him. He told investors the timetable is “not five years anymore,” a reference to his running joke for when he might retire.

Last month, Dimon devoted a large part of his annual letter to shareholders on AI, putting the technology in the same category as the printing press.

“[W]e are completely convinced the consequences will be extraordinary and possibly as transformational as some of the major technological inventions of the past several hundred years,” Dimon wrote. “Think the printing press, the steam engine, electricity, computing and the internet, among others.”

The bank has for years turned to predictive AI and machine learning for things like marketing, fraud and risk, the letter said, but is now exploring the use of generative AI for things like software engineering, customer service and operations.

“While we are investing more money in our AI capabilities, many of these projects pay for themselves,” Dimon wrote. “Over time, we anticipate that our use of AI has the potential to augment virtually every job, as well as impact our workforce composition. It may reduce certain job categories or roles, but it may create others as well.”

As noted here at the time, several technology firms have recently launched a task force dedicated to preparing the workforce for the AI era.

“With AI transforming various industries and job descriptions, there’s an acknowledged urgency to train employees in skills essential for thriving in AI-driven settings,” PYMNTS wrote.