Why Goldman Sachs' tech chief envisions a future of humans managing AI agents
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In the continuing saga of humans vs. the AI revolution, fear is common for anyone fretting about its impact on their job or quality of life.
"Listen, this [AI] is just another transition, like before Excel, after Excel, or before or after you could use a search engine," Goldman Sachs (GS) chief information officer Marco Argenti told Yahoo Finance Executive Editor Brian Sozzi on a new episode of the Opening Bid podcast (see the video above or listen below).
"It's more about what part of your job is like something that you really feel that you add unique value," he continued. "It elevates your work rather than doing repetitive tasks."
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Argenti is fluent in the dance between human and machine.
Before joining Goldman Sachs, he was involved in tech integration across several departments within Amazon's (AMZN) AWS cloud services division. "I came in 2013, which was almost at the beginning of a mega cycle of cloud computing," he recalled.
Argenti joined Goldman Sachs in 2019, just as AI was beginning its rise in everyday use. "I would estimate that at this moment, close to two-thirds of the organization in one way or another is exposed to an AI tool," he said of the investment bank.
AI adoption comes in waves, starting with using it to make existing processes more efficient, followed by deeper integration into the organization, Argenti said. Another milestone is using AI agents to perform tasks such as analysis and data extraction in reports.
"The way you scale those agents is that [they] are outsourced to other agents," he said. "The same way as you have managers."
Early on, fear of AI's negative impacts on the human workforce reigned supreme. In 2023, critics cited lack of human insight, creativity, and privacy issues among their concerns.
That same year, Goldman Sachs estimated AI could upend as many as 300 million jobs, and Resume Builder surveyed 750 business leaders about their attitudes toward AI. Of the companies using AI, 37% said the technology would replace some of their workers. In 2024, a separate poll found that 44% of employers would "definitely or probably" lay off workers due to AI.
Meanwhile, the economy has had its AI-related ups and downs. Last summer, AI chip king Nvidia (NVDA) disrupted the "Magnificent Seven" and briefly became the highest-valued company. Later, upstarts like DeepSeek entered the arena, threatening incumbent large language models (LLM) by doing a similar job for cheaper.
Yet, it isn't as simple as replacing humans with machines. Everything has a shelf life, and according to Argenti, AI agents aren't immune. "Essentially, you shut them down or retrain them," he said of the risks of an AI workforce. "You can actually put them back to the drawing board and retrain them."
Argenti envisions a world where humans and machines coexist, with their best talents being put to use.
"You might have some job displacement at the beginning, but then those industries tend to create a lot of new jobs," he said. "We have 12,000 developers within Goldman Sachs out of 45,000 people. If we didn't have computers, we wouldn't have those people, and so generally it rebalances itself."
"I think that will be the same for AI, except there is a certain velocity," he said.
Three times each week, Yahoo Finance Executive Editor Brian Sozzi fields insight-filled conversations and chats with the biggest names in business and markets on Opening Bid. You can find more episodes on our video hub or watch on your preferred streaming service.
Grace Williams is a writer for Yahoo Finance.
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly listed Marco Argenti's title. We regret the error.
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