JPMorgan is one of the largest employers of AI professionals. In its annual letter to shareholders, the bank’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, said that the AI team at JPMorgan now has more than 2000 professional experts in machine learning and artificial intelligence, as well as data scientists. JPMorgan has already said before that they are throwing resources at AI. According to Dimon, the bank has no intentions of cutting down on its AI force, as the team is generating enough from projects that they work on that they are not a burden on the system.
JPMorgan’s AI spending
CEO Jamie Dimon addressed the issue of use cases at the bank, as they had been old plaguing the system before the AI frenzy, but he highlighted the role of the AI team. He praised the AI team for contributing to more than 400 active use cases in the domains of fraud and risk, as well as in marketing. JPMorgan has invested its resources in a huge AI program that spans from fraud prevention to areas like customer experience and marketing and also covers many more areas of banking.
Previously, Mike Mayo, analyst at Fargo LLC, asked Jeremy Barnum, chief financial officer at JPMorgan & Co., at an earnings briefing about the impact of AI on his technological approach and the size of his tech budget. To this, Barnum replied,
“There’s clearly some very significant opportunities, not for nothing, starting with technology developers themselves in terms of the opportunity for significantly increased productivity there.”
Source: JPMorgan
He also added that,
“We’re JPMorgan Chase. We’re not going to be chasing shiny objects here in AI. We want to do this in an extremely disciplined way, it’s very commercial and very linked to tangible outcomes. And so, the current focus is on making sure we have a contained, well-chosen list of high-impact use cases and that we’re throwing resources at those in the right way, that’s extremely pragmatic and disciplined, and we’re holding ourselves accountable for actual results.”
Source: JPMorgan
Barnum’s confidence is clear from his statement, and with this clear vision and approach, JPMorgan surely knows what they are up to. The resources are not allocated in excitment but with a clear understanding of what the benefits are.
AI utilization over a broad spectrum
Speaking of the use cases handled by the AI team, Dimon said that they are exploring the generative AI use cases in customer services, operations, general employee productivity, and most importantly, software engineering. Only the AI research team now has 200 employees. Along with in house solutions, they also research the latest happenings in the fintech world, and they are also working on synthetic data.
According to Demon, the projects on which their AI people are working almost pay off for themselves. This can be a deciding factor in retaining such a large number of professionals despite the pressure to cut down on spending on technology in banks. Other banks’ employees may not be enjoying this sense of job security, but according to Dimon, innovations brought through AI may trim down certain job roles and even entire categories, but it will definitely create others for the right talent.
