A conference in Sydney recently. A fund manager from China told the room their firm had gone from nearly 400 staff to about 30 in two years. AI had taken over much of the work.
Stunned silence. Then audible gasps.
Which work? Reviewing different fund managers. Comparing track records. Assessing their teams. Collecting and analysing the data. Basically, the research desk.
I followed up afterwards with one question. What were the thirty kept for?
Two things:
Checking the machine. AI still gets things wrong ('hallucination' seems to be the preferred term), and humans are needed to spot and correct it before it reaches an investment decision.
And raising money. That still means sitting across a table from someone and taking three cups of tea. AI can't do that.
Many of those who left went to venture capital firms, often on better pay. So, whilst it was tough to tell people they were losing their jobs to AI, it wasn't catastrophic.
It's one firm's experience, and I was asked to treat it that way. Fair enough. But the message is clear. AI is coming, and it's going to have an impact.
Most of the people in that room were connectors and relationship-builders. Their work is the introduction, the dinner, the follow-up call, the human interaction. The number was shocking and everyone commented on it. But the lost jobs were different to theirs.
AI can do the analysis and manage the CRM. But it still can't pour the tea (yet).
PS. If you need a reminder of what the machine can't do, my free ebook Three Cups of Tea is here: https://davidthomas.asia/ebooks/3-cups-of-tea
