A Top Goldman Sachs Official Is Warning That Too Much AI Could Actually Harm Bankers’ Skills

A top Goldman Sachs official warned that AI could impact bankers' reasoning skills if they rely too much on it to do their work.

Chris Churchman, who leads the bank's digital platform for institutional clients, told CNBC that such a scenario poses a "huge danger" as "we outsource our reasoning to these models, and we have cognitive atrophy that stops us being able to reason from first principles ourselves."

"You still need to reason about [problems] and structure it into an argument, and now we're delegating reasoning," he added.

Churchman went on to say that the bank needs to " make sure we don't lose that tacit and intuitive knowledge that some of our best people have today [and] to ensure the next generation have it too." He said a good example is that of junior traders fielding client pricing requests under supervision. And while that could be automated, "then do we get the senior traders that fully understand?"

The bank detailed in a recent report that Artificial intelligence is beginning to leave a measurable mark on labor markets across the world's largest developed economies, but the pressure is far from evenly distributed among different industries.

The bank noted that industries with greater exposure to AI automation have generally experienced weaker growth in job openings since the second half of 2022.

The effects are particularly noticeable in the United States, Germany and Australia, and offer some of the clearest evidence yet that the rapid adoption of generative AI is beginning to reshape hiring.

The findings do not point to a broad AI-driven collapse in employment. Instead, Goldman found that the impact remains concentrated in specific industries and among certain workers, with people trying to enter the labor market facing significantly greater pressure.

Information and communication services, one of the sectors considered most exposed to AI, have experienced slowing employment growth across nearly every major developed economy since 2022. Outside the United States, however, employment in the sector remains near or above its longer-term trend.

The picture becomes more striking when Goldman examines individual industries where AI tools can already perform or automate substantial portions of existing jobs. Employment in call centers, software publishing, management consulting and advertising has fallen sharply below historical trends across developed economies, according to the research.

Call centers show some of the largest gaps. Employment in the industry is now 39% below trend in the United States, 33% below trend in Canada and 27% below trend in Germany. Goldman said those figures suggest that AI-related employment pressure is already becoming visible in industries where technology capable of automating existing work is readily available.

The pressure is particularly significant for entry-level workers. Goldman examined employment growth across more than 800 occupations and found that AI-related headwinds were strongest among workers at the beginning of their careers. Occupations considered at high risk of displacement from AI also experienced an additional negative effect, although it was smaller.

Across the overall labor market, the effect remains modest. Goldman calculated that a 10% increase in occupational exposure to AI was associated with only a 0.1 percentage point reduction in annual headcount growth in the United States, Canada and France.

For entry-level workers, however, the drag was considerably larger. The effect exceeded 0.6 percentage point in Australia and 0.2 percentage point in the United States, according to Goldman. That distinction could become increasingly important as companies determine whether AI should supplement junior employees or eliminate some of the tasks traditionally assigned to workers starting their careers.