Will AGI wipe out IB jobs in 2 years?
A lot of the top AI researchers (Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, Geoffrey Hinton, Ilya Sutskever etc...) strongly believe that AI will replace a significant amount of white collar work within the next 2-5 years. Sure, many of these guys are financially tied to the success of the AI, but there is no doubt that AI has improved significantly over the past years. As a recent college graduate, I can confirm that a vast majority of college students are outsourcing any sort of intellectual work straight to Chatgpt. When gpt first came out in 2022, it wasn't that useful or widely adopted amongst college students. Although current AI is crippled by frequent hallucinations and errors, I have no doubt that it will eventually be able to do most excel/PowerPoint tasks as it continues to exponentially improve. Most financial modelling doesn't require a lot of original thinking or creativity so if high level programmers can be replaced by AI, why cant we? P.S I am starting a fulltime IB position in July, so I am a little paranoia and have a little regret that I did not pursue a more AI proof field such as Medicine or Law.
God I hope so… IB is terrible
Short answer No. If you think IB is truly going to be replaced, law and medicine will also be on the docket too.
You might have a point with law but it's intellectually dishonest to pretend like IB or any white collar job is more AI proof than a doctor.
My point is if you think AI will reach the level where it is replacing senior bankers and lawyers, many doctors will be replaced as well (eg you will talk to chatgpt for your RX).
I don't think it will reach this level in the next 20 years simply because of the nature of capitalism. These are highly competitive, adversarial industries where AI will be leveraged by the rainmakers to compete against each other even more fiercely. For example, litigators will leverage AI to draft briefs + motions faster, prep depositions, research more quickly and thoroughly, analyze more data etc.. which will drives more cases to trial at a faster pace. Judges will likely also use AI to review cases at a faster and deeper level too.
agree w/ a lot here and honestly think ppl are underestimating how fast this hits. AI can already handle a huge chunk of entry-level white collar work across most industries. the only reason it’s not everywhere yet is risk + compliance, esp at banks where adoption moves slow. but that’s just friction, not a tech limitation.
anyone doubting this needs to actually use GPT-o3 Pro w/ lots of context (context is what it thrives at), it’s not perfect but w/ access to internal data and past deals, it could easily do 60-80% of what analysts/associates do. McKinsey already has internal AI that pulls from their knowledge base to build slides, this is happening now, not 5 yrs out.
tbh I think juniors have an edge, we’re not decades deep into a specialty, no sunk cost in one skill set, more open to change. we’re learning w/ AI in the loop from day one, and that matters. yeah, early-career roles will shift, but we’re also the most equipped to evolve w/ it.
over time, even senior-level strategic roles get replaced. once AI can more reliably reason, senior knowledge work isn’t safe either. biggest moat left is trust and relationships.
Ultimately I see this as a rare window, those who lean in early are setting themselves up to be in important decision maker roles younger than any generation before.
Lol we can see the em dash bro
There’s no em dashes in his comment lol
where?
wont completely replace ib obv but will def make 1 analyst the equivalent to 2 if the bank integrates it heavily enough. at that point of adoption, i think we'd start to see whats already happening in software, where low level coding can be done via Cursor/VS Code Copilot; the analog to that in our biz is less hours spent on pptx/formatting/alignment, and more on ASO/VP level substantive advisory/networking stuff
I actually think AI replacing 80% of what an analyst does today (and I think it will) will create a need for more analysts than we have today. There’s so many things junior bankers can be doing to add real value of the mundane was taken care of and they weren’t so occupied. The role will change but it changed when we got a computer and excel etc.
Jesus, shut the fuck up with this stupid take. More analysts? Take a look at global demographics and you'll realize the financial industry is going to contract by almost 50% in the coming decades.
Thanks for your unique insight, Pussy galore.
More of a meta question, but does it feel like AI and the economy is a circular reference? Let's say AI automates and (in this scenario) eliminates low and mid skill white collar jobs. How does the economy work? A gov't driven UBI program only works if there are revenues to support it...and if nobody is working, nobody is paying taxes. How does it make sense in the long run? W-2 employees making between 70-500k are really the sweet spot for tax revenue due to their limited ability to reduce their tax burden. This is the exact swathe of the economy that could be affected.
There certainly will be winners - highly automated unicorns with under 20 employees could be a reality shortly. But what about more mundane businesses that are the meat and potatoes of white collar employment - things like IT MSPs for instance?
This is correct. We don't need AI for most jobs quite honestly.
The CEOs of J&J and Novartis said that cancer would be eliminated in 10-15 years. Obviously that hasn’t happened, but cancer treatment has improved rapidly. If the tech CEOs believe that white collared jobs are gone in 2-5 years, maybe there’s going to be lessened hiring instead. Who’s going to run the AI anyways? Probably analysts
AI taking over the analyst job will only make analysts available for sourcing / early relationship building activities akin to the growth equity model. That’s not a completely terrible future to look towards - where analysts could start providing supervised coverage to their AI company buds before they’re scaled, incentivizing the analyst to stay in banking longer term to reap the benefits of those eventual exits.
Humans evolve in the face of danger, let’s stop with the sci fi about millions of jobs poofing in thin air over the course of the next 700 days. It will take banks that long to even procure a piece of AI-enabled software let alone letting it run loose across the org.
(1) "Will AGI wipe out IB jobs in 2 years?"
No lol. AGI is too fragile to do this.
(2) "A lot of the top AI researchers (Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, Geoffrey Hinton, Ilya Sutskever etc...)..."
(a) Altman is not a top researcher. He is a finance bro.
(b) And a lot of top AI researchers have been saying that AGI is around the corner for decades. They can say what they want, but there is just about nothing being done to address the fragility of the system. Every single one of these types of platforms lose their competence the further away from their training data they get. This is not being addressed in any kind of material way in the "standard program."
(3) At some point in the future, we will have AI that can materially reduce the job prospects of bankers. This is not something that's going to happen in the next 10 years, let alone the next 2 years
It will have an effect on analyst jobs definitely. Maybe up to VP. Once you get to the higher levels however there needs to be thinking, interaction involved. It really reduces time consuming tasks such as modeling, equity research etc
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