JPMorgan Wants Employees to Go Easy on AI Usage

JPMorgan Chase says it is advising its workers to think twice about their artificial intelligence (AI) usage.

This effort by the country’s largest bank, addressed during its Tuesday (July 14) earnings call, comes as many businesses are eyeing their AI consumption amid rising costs. Chief Financial Officer Jeremy Barnum addressed the need for using models when appropriate, citing the example of employing the AI to create report summaries.

“As you know, the tools are quite good at doing that, and you really don’t need the latest cutting edge incredibly expensive model to summarize an analyst report,” he said. “The idea is use the right model for the right purpose, be smart about open source where appropriate, and ensure that you’re getting value out of it ultimately.”

While “not financially meaningful this year,” token expenses are still a key focus for JPMorgan, as they are for most other corporations, Barnum said.

“Just for the avoidance of doubt, it is a trivial number for the first half of the year,” the finance chief added. “We are forecasting some meaningful acceleration in that number for the second half of the year.”

Meanwhile, CEO Jamie Dimon said during the same earnings call that JPMorgan now has around 1,000 AI use cases under development, with approximately 50 representing the bank’s largest efforts across things like fraud detection, risk management, marketing, prospecting, note-taking and document review.

The technology should create “huge efficiency in certain parts of the company,” Dimon said, adding that some business units have already cut staffing significantly and reassigned many employees to other parts of the organization. The CEO also cautioned against assuming those gains will remain exclusive to the largest banks.

“The ultimate beneficiary of AI will be our customers,” Dimon said, adding that competition will ultimately turn many productivity gains into better products, and reduced costs and errors rather than permanently higher bank margins.

Also Tuesday, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan spoke of the need for AI controls during that lender’s earnings call.

“It has great utility,” Moynihan said. “It has to be carefully managed. You have to have your data perfect. You have to have your rules base, so it doesn’t make mistakes.”

Meanwhile, the PYMNTS Intelligence report “The Enterprise AI Benchmark Report: Financial Services Pulls Ahead in the Enterprise AI Race” found that businesses across financial services and insurance, healthcare, and media and advertising are investing more into AI.

“As they do so, these enterprises are beginning to decide which projects deserve real capital and which still need proof,” PYMNTS wrote recently.