Morning Coffee: HSBC & Goldman Sachs unleash AI job fears. Man with 100 unsuccessful job applications sues Workday for discrimination
Is AI coming for your banking job? If you work in the back office at HSBC, the answer seems to be that yes, it absolutely is. And soon.
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HSBC has a problem with its human beings. It wants them in the office, but as Bloomberg points out that it has too few desks, particularly in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Guangzhou, where its technologists and back office people tend to lurk. In these locations, the combined shortfall of nearly 10,000 desks exceeds the already known 7,000 desk shortfall at HSBC in London.
Remedying this will cost HSBC $200m while it's cutting $1.5bn from costs, says Bloomberg. Fortunately, there is a solution: computers don't need workstations, especially when they're in the cloud. Coincidentally, or not, therefore, Financial News reports that HSBC is in talks with a company called CausaLens to automate back office functions and reduce its cost base. CausaLens claims to automate 90% of data-related tasks at 10% of the cost. Perfect. HSBC isn't commenting.
Goldman Sachs is also busy with AI, but it is not being as full-frontal in its approach. Instead, Goldman Sachs CIO Marco Argenti reportedly sent an internal memo yesterday announcing that the firm has reached an "important moment" on its "AI journey" and is releasing something called "GS AI Assistant – the first generative AI-powered tool to reach this scale.”
GS AI Assistant appears to be a special Goldman LLM, which Argenti says will "boost productivity, from summarizing complex documents. and drafting initial content to performing data analysis.” It doesn't sound that dissimilar to the LLMs at Morgan Stanley or JPMorgan where everyone is busy having their productivity boosted too.
Goldman Sachs isn't short on office space, so there is less need for AI to eliminate people quickly. But there are fears it may eliminate them slowly. Revenue generators think they're safe, though. “Lose my job to AI? I’m unfireable,” one banker informed the New York Post.
Separately, an IT professional who applied for 100 jobs which matched his experience, and who received 100 rejections, sometimes immediately or in the middle of the night, is suing online recruiting platform Workday for discrimination.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Derek Mobley, who was in his mid-40s when he made the applications, is suing for discrimination based on age, race and disability. “There’s a standard bell curve in statistics. It didn’t make sense that my failure rate was 100%,” he says.
Mobley's case is being heard in California. If he succeeds, thousands of other people aged 40+ could sue Workday too, and the company may be forced to reveal how it scores applications.
Meanwhile...
Jamie Dimon's guide to the current skills shortages. “We are short on labor...We all have needs for cyber, we all have needs for coding, we all have needs for programming, we have needs for financial management and program management, things like that.” (Fortune)
Alantra cut 20 senior dealmakers late last year. Now it's hiring again. “To be honest, we overdid it a bit. We stretched too much, ending up in around 27 countries with not enough critical mass in all of those.” (Financial News)
Hays has been downgraded by UBS, which says this is the longest downturn in hiring for 20 years. "Unfortunately, we now believe that the macroeconomic uncertainty is having a further impact on hiring intentions." (Proactive Investors)
Andon Hong Kong is opening an office in New York under Chuck Son who once worked for Soros. (Bloomberg)
Nik Storonsky will get as much as $15bn if his targets are hit and Revolut becomes worth $150bn. (Financial Times)
Mark Zuckerberg is sending WhatsApp messages and emails to people he wants for his AI team. He's also offering them hundreds of millions of dollars and having them over for meals at his house. Some people are refusing him because his plans seem very vague. (WSJ)
The most desired car in the Hamptons this summer is the original Land Cruiser from Toyota’s FJ series, costing $229k. “We have about 50 units in the Hamptons area, and interest continues to grow as people resist showing up in a G-Wagon or Cybertruck.” (The Cut)
The other status symbol? “Oh, I’m so rich I don’t even need to go to New York City.” Far more people spend all July and August in Florida than ever before. (The Cut)
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