“It will eliminate jobs,” Damon said, noting that tractors and cars once did that. “It’s happening very quickly,” he said, referring to sudden and disruptive technological change. He urged society, government and business to “figure out how we can save jobs”, whether that be retraining, a new form of income, or early retirement, and said there needed to be “something. You can’t take all these people and throw them out on the street… making $30,000 a year when they were making $150,000, you’ll have a revolution.”
He insisted that this hack is real and deserves to be taken seriously. “AI itself is real,” he declared, explaining that he sees the underlying technology as transformative and lasting. “You should use it,” he said, speaking to any company that was listening. But he added a caveat, saying that in 1996, “the Internet was real” and “you can look at the whole thing like a bubble.” He then analyzed the real difference he sees: between artificial intelligence on the one hand, and generative AI on the other. That’s an important distinction, Dimon said, but added that “some asset prices are high, in some form of bubble territory.”
Bubble or not
Damon compared the abundance of AI today to the early days of the Internet, calling it “a bonus overall,” Damon said. Google, YouTube and dead She eventually showed up and proved her mettle. He said he was somewhat cautious about conditions in the current market, but urged people not to dismiss all AI as just speculative madness. “You can’t look at AI as a bubble, although some of these things may be in the bubble. Overall, it’s likely to come to fruition.” He said some projects would not be implemented the way they were announced, and others would get the strength they need, but declined to discuss them in particular, urging investments to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Just days before, Damon had done just that He warned in an interview with the BBC He sees 30% chances of a stock market correction, describing himself as “much more worried than others.”
Under Dimon’s leadership, JPMorgan has invested billions in AI and machine learning since 2012, and now has more than 2,000 employees specializing in AI and hundreds of applications in production. He cited worthy tangible benefits Up to $2 billion in cost savings Or new sources of income. Dimon described artificial intelligence as an integral part of JPMorgan’s operations, from fraud prevention to customer service and analysis of complex legal documents.
The CEO made a crucial distinction, saying his bank had applied AI to “very specific things” like risk, fraud and marketing, and had seen it work. Adopting AI is sometimes difficult to distinguish from pure procedural improvement, he said, likening it to entering a new workflow “and suddenly your headcount is down by 40%.”
But Damon placed generative AI, which is notoriously prone to hallucinations, in the “other category.” This is highly uncertain in terms of efficiency, with some people finding it saves them hours, he said. “What’s that worth? Did you just spend two hours doing something else? We don’t really know.” Reply to An influential MIT study found that 95% of creative AI pilots fail To achieve a return on investment, Dimon said he believes it is a mistake to try to calculate everything too carefully in terms of efficiency: “We spend a lot of money to get the data in the right format, so it will be used by AI. We just do that. We don’t measure the cost of that.” Getting the right data is imperative, and then efficiency will follow, he said. Dimon added that he describes his friends at other companies, other CEOs, and most AI adoption stories as “really working,” acknowledging that some may be disappointed, too.
Master class
For Damon, agility and humility are crucial in this era of rapid change. “Use it. Get good at it. Make it part of your toolkit, your weapons kit, and you will learn. You will get better all the time,” he advised fellow executives to make ongoing investments in training and adaptation. JPMorgan has even begun sending managers to AI “master classes” to deepen their skills and broaden their organizational expertise.
As the global investment boom in AI continues to lift markets – accounting for an estimated 40% of US GDP growth in 2025 – Dimon’s voice stands out for its candor and caution. Ever the pragmatist, he called for thoughtful regulation, strong safety nets, and thoughtful planning to mitigate the effects of artificial intelligence and harness the opportunities it presents. For political and corporate leaders alike, Dimon’s message is clear and unambiguous: the era of artificial intelligence has arrived, and the worst response is denial or delay.
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