Goldman Sachs will unleash a wave of generative AI “robots” to automate its famed “human assembly line,” but the tech won’t spark mass layoffs, the bank’s President and Chief Operating Officer John Waldron said Tuesday.
Goldman plans to deploy digital agents across the firm to slash costs and supercharge productivity in a move that could reshape one of New York City’s biggest employers.
“We’ve described Goldman Sachs as a human assembly line,” Waldron told CNBC at the investment bank’s 200 West St. headquarters.
“Manufacturing got robotic decades ago. Banks haven’t — because we’re an information company and it’s been harder. We don’t have a factory floor to put robots in,” the 57-year-old top money man added.
“Our human assembly lines will become more digitized, digital agents will be our robots,” he continued. “I’m not sure dynamically how the overall headcount will change, but I think the firm is going to get much more resilient and much more scalable.”
He dismissed fears of an AI-fueled “march of the machines” sparking mass layoffs among the firm’s highly paid bankers.
Waldron insisted the firm’s artificial intelligence push will create new engineering and tech jobs, leaving overall headcount roughly stable and the company “much more resilient and much more scalable.”
The veteran Goldmanite of 26 years’ service also pushed back against the growing media narrative that has blamed AI for recent job cuts.
“Most of the layoffs and headcount reductions that you report on and that we see really don’t have that much to do with generative AI deployment at this juncture,” Waldron told CNBC.
“I still think it’s a catch-up on what was occurring kind of post-COVID — hoarding employees — and the need to kind of have more engineering, coding capability. We’re now in a different part of the journey.”
Waldron, whose colleagues widely view him as heir apparent to CEO David Solomon, said Goldman would use cutting-edge AI technology to build its very own “digital factory floor.”
“Digital agents will be our robots,” he told CNBC. “They will start to change the way we workflow the firm.”
The shift is a “big unlock” for the bank, Waldron added, promising major productivity gains and significant cost savings.
His comments mark the clearest signal yet from one of Wall Street’s most powerful firms that the AI revolution is moving out of pilot projects and straight into the heart of its operations.
The technology can be used to tailor customer service, streamline coding processes, and produce rapid data synthesis that allows wealth managers to optimize client portfolios at unprecedented speeds.
AI is also seen as a way to speed up some of the “grunt” work done by junior bankers, such as summarizing earnings calls and drafting pitchbooks.
Goldman’s research economists warned earlier this year that the workaday world would be upended by the next digital revolution.
Their report published in March said AI threatens to automate tasks that currently account for a staggering 25% of all American work hours, with entry-level desk jockeys in their 20s and 30s sitting squarely in the crosshairs.
Globally, the Wall Street titan estimated that a massive 300 million jobs are exposed to AI-driven automation.
Domestically, its researchers predict between 6% and 7% of the US workforce will be displaced over the next decade as corporations rapidly adopt the technology.
Early casualties are already piling up in the tech sector, alongside knowledge and creative roles such as management consultants, call center operators, and graphic designers, the paper said.
