Private Equity CEO Predicts AI Will Leave 60% of Finance Conference Attendees Jobless (entrepreneur.com)
- Reference: 0177991403
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/25/06/10/0016235/private-equity-ceo-predicts-ai-will-leave-60-of-finance-conference-attendees-jobless
- Source link: https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/vista-ceo-tells-superreturn-attendees-ai-will-take-your-job/492825
Smith predicted that while 40% of attendees will adopt AI agents -- programs that autonomously perform complex, multi-step tasks -- the remaining majority will need to find new employment as AI transforms the sector. "All of the jobs currently carried out by one billion knowledge workers today would change due to AI," Smith said, clarifying that while jobs won't disappear entirely, they will fundamentally transform.
[1] https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/vista-ceo-tells-superreturn-attendees-ai-will-take-your-job/492825
So we all know the guy is selling snake oil (Score:1)
But that doesn't mean we aren't facing significant technological unemployment in the very near future.
We already have massive amounts of technological and employment due to factories being automated. 70% of middle class jobs lost since 1980 got taken by automation and process improvement.
Our entire civilization is built on two basic concepts. First rapid population growth and second full employment.
Both of those pillars are collapsing and since we grew up with them we refuse to adapt or change.
Re: So we all know the guy is selling snake oil (Score:2)
I don't know what problem a war would solve. The right answer is to focus on space travel, since AI and automation will make it easier to build space stations and colonies.
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I'm all in favor of space travel, but that's not going to solve the social problems on earth, and we don't yet have the ability to run a small self-sufficient stable society in an off-earth environment.
I do support space habitats, but I tend to think of that as a "next century" (or after the singularity) kind of thing.
What a large war does is kill of a large proportion of the most aggressive young males. It's one of the traditional ways the current crop of alpha-male primates keep control.
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> Our entire civilization is built on two basic concepts. First rapid population growth and second full employment.
There are more people employed today as a percentage of the population than ever. The world population continues to grow. Not sure how you came to that conclusion.
But who will train the AI? (Score:2)
Certainly Mr. Smith would like for AI to replace millions of people in the finance sector. But if you eliminate 60% of finance workers and make the remaining 40% dependent on AI to do their jobs, it's going to really narrow down future training data. AI will be consuming its own output.
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The worst part about it is, by the time it's clear to everyone there is a problem, the people left will be too stupid to figure out what that problem actually is, let alone how to fix it. It will be clear that there's massive population decline and both the economy and natural environment are non-functioning, but most of them will barely be able to spell or do basic arithmetic without the help of the massive computer cluster that's eating everything.
Ummm..... (Score:2)
> Robert F. Smith, CEO of Vista Equity Partners, told attendees [...] 60% of the 5,500 finance professionals present will be "looking for work" next year due to AI
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> Smith said, clarifying that while jobs won't disappear entirely, they will fundamentally transform.
"You're going to lose your job.... oh but not really."
Private Equity's New Target: Private Equity Itself (Score:1)
"60% of the 5,500 finance professionals present will be "looking for work" next year due to AI disruption."
Super optimistic or deeply cynical take from Robert F. Smith.
It sounds like he thinks that AI is either "primed and ready to make solid decisions and not hallucinate bankrupt Private Equity firms", or "that 60% of the people in Private Equity are so useless that hallucinating LLMs can replace them".
Probably more thinking of keeping more of the money "in-house" with the wealth class as it seems like Pri
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The conference is aimed at decision makers, which means they spend most of their time researching and then based on some company based formulas they decided the amount of money they are willing to risk on someone else's dream.
that sounds like a perfect job that LLM AIs can easily do. Switch to some system programmed with your companies formulas and let review everything, impartially, and then have that last 40% doing a final review and you can see where he is removing that 60%.
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Perhaps he thinks that in his field hallucinations don't matter. Perhaps he's right. I remember a famous elephant that beat the stock market. (I think it was also done with other animals.) Also see "A Random Walk through Wall Street"
"SuperReturn?" (Score:2)
These must be those car warranty scammers I keep hearing about. If that's the case, I have no issue with them being out of job.
Why would anyone care what this guy... (Score:2)
Why would anyone care what this guy has to say? He's the Sammy The Bull of private equity. He was running a massively dirty shop and ended up being implicated in the largest tax fraud case in the history of the country. He was using his fund and offshore accounts to help a billionaire, Robert Brockman, cheat taxes.
And this isn't my opinion. This is the DOJ's opinion. This is Robert F. Smith's own opinion. He signed a non-prosecution agreement admitting to all of this...and then Brockman's lawyer died of "s
what do they do (Score:2)
I was curious about what "finance professionals" do, maybe there is more variety than I realized, but no.
An investment firm I do business with has a human agent assigned to me and he offered to perform a detailed analysis, sounded useful. The first step was data gathering. I filled out a lengthy form listing all my assets and liabilities, my risk level, my goals hopes and dreams, etc. Then we had a video meeting to discuss it. It was clear that he had plugged the form data into a software utility that gener
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So that the people who run the financial institutions can extract from you more efficiently?
Or is unemployment, in and of itself, pleasing to you?
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I used to think that, but what that means is that when one sector becomes unemployed, you have a lot more people coming for your job. The front-end web people will get Azure certs and try to pry you out of your IT job. When layoffs happen, everyone gets hit by this, and it adds pressure. That quiet, cushy job in finance is now being assailed by people getting their CPAs. All fields feel it as more people are willing to come in and work for less.
Then, there are social issues. Charlie is unemployed, so t
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I think they should have asked Zillow how that worked out for them first.