Senior Wall Street finance executives say artificial intelligence could make many jobs, such as cashiers and drivers, unnecessary and lead to widespread social unrest.
Armen Panossian, co-CEO of Los Angeles-based investment firm Oaktree Capital Management, told Bloomberg News that while AI “clearly has the potential to deliver enormous economic benefits,” it also poses “the greatest risks” because of its “social impacts.”
“Millions of people could lose their jobs. Who is going to retrain them?” Panossian said. He told Bloomberg News.
“If we don’t address that, it could lead to social unrest.”
Panossian said that if we continue to ignore the risks, “we will pay a price in terms of jobs and in terms of people who rely on work before payday. They will find themselves untrained and unprepared for the new economy.”
“And we as a society will be forced to either have social unrest or maintain the welfare state,” he added.
His views echo dire predictions contained in reports and studies compiled by academics and experts who have sought to assess the impact of AI on the future job market.
last year, Goldman Sachs warned Trained on diverse datasets and learning pattern recognition, generative AI could impact up to 300 million full-time jobs worldwide.
In 2020, the World Economic Forum released a study stating that AI, automation and other technologies could lead to the loss of up to 85 million jobs worldwide by 2025.
A 2017 report by consulting firm McKinsey estimated that up to 800 million jobs worldwide could be automated by 2030, forcing between 400 million and 800 million people to change jobs or learn new skills as a result.
“If we don’t do something now to retrain some of these people or prepare them for the post-AI jobs environment, we risk creating a problem of a deepening divide between the haves and the have-nots, between those who are well off and those who are struggling to get by,” Panossian said.
“And that’s going to mean a lot of damage to a lot of people who didn’t expect that to happen to them.”
He also warned investors who are currently bullish on AI stocks that these assets may be overvalued and the market may be flooded with speculation, likening it to the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s and early 2000s.
“The potential for profit is clear, but the timing is not,” Panossian said.
“And if that timing takes a lot longer than investors expect, I would expect we’ll see a pretty violent reset in valuations, with investors potentially suffering some losses in the process.”
“I remember when the fiber optic boom was happening, so be careful and don’t get too reliant or focused on AI,” Panossian warned investors.
