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The AI revolution is coming for Wall Street

Goldman Sachs is making strides in using AI to trade stocks, but what does that mean for regular investors?

A collage of the NYSE, a Wall Street trader, and a robot hand

Illustration: Anna Kim, Photos: Getty Images

less than 3 min read

For all those looking for a man in finance (trust fund, 6 '5”, blue eyes), your search is about to get even harder.

Why? The robots are moving to Wall Street.

According to Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, AI can do 95% of the work of writing an S-1 prospectus in just a few minutes. Compare that to ten years ago when that same job, a key part of filing for an IPO, took a team of about half a dozen bankers over two weeks to complete.

That’s why Goldman Sachs is following peers JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley in creating its own hyper-genius digital robot assistant for its employees, including asset managers, traders, and bankers. The GS AI assistant has already been rolled out to about 10,000 employees, Chief Information Officer Marco Argenti told CNBC.

Eventually, through interacting with employees, the AI assistants will “become more like the way a Goldman employee would think,” Argenti said.

The fear is obvious: If AI can write, produce, and think like a finance employee, why pay a real human to do the work? But Argenti argued that the new AI tools will help employees produce more, not completely replace them.

Of course, let's not pretend finance is the only sector that could send us mere humans running to Indeed.com. AI is expected to majorly disrupt industries beyond financial services, including tech and media, too (😧).

Should you ask ChatGPT to design your portfolio? While generative AI has come a long way, it hasn't proved definitively that it can pick stocks better than humans. The results of most studies have been mixed—sometimes AI can pick winning stocks, but sometimes it can be beaten by a five-year-old. The real question is, if Wall Street is filled with robots, who will shop at the Vineyard Vines and Just Salad stores across Manhattan?—LB

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Making sense of market moves

Stay up to date on the latest market news with daily analysis of the investing landscape, served up Brew-style.