Jamie Dimon Says AI Will Eliminate Jobs, 'It Is What It Is' — But Warns Cutting $150,000 Truck Driving Jobs To $25K A Year Would Bring 'Civil Unrest'

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For workers wondering how far artificial intelligence could go, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has a straightforward answer — AI is going to change the job market, whether people are ready for it or not. Some jobs will disappear, others will change and new ones will likely emerge. But Dimon warned that the speed of that transition could matter just as much as the technology itself.

"As a business person, my view is don't put your head in the sand," Dimon said at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, in January. "It is what it is. We're going to deploy it. Will it eliminate jobs? Yes. Will it change jobs? Yes. Will it add some jobs? Probably."

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Dimon was responding to a question about whether AI could have a major impact on the labor market, including the possibility that half of all entry-level white-collar jobs could disappear within one to five years. Rather than predicting exactly how many jobs will be lost, he focused on what businesses and governments should do if the technology moves faster than workers can adapt.

"You can hope for the world you want, but you're gonna get the world that you got and your competitors are gonna use it and countries are gonna use it," Dimon said.

He also warned that AI could move "too fast for society." If that happens, he said, government and businesses may need to work together to retrain workers , help people relocate and provide income assistance during the transition.

Dimon pointed to Trade Adjustment Assistance , a federal program designed to help workers who lose their jobs because of trade, as an example of what was supposed to happen. But he said the program was "incredibly poorly done" in the U.S. and "did not work." This time, he said, the goal should be to have a plan that actually works.

Dimon then offered a hypothetical example involving one of the jobs that could eventually be affected by AI — truck driving.

There are 2 million commercial trucks in the U.S. , Dimon said, and AI could eventually make it possible to operate trucks with the push of a button. The technology could save lives, make transportation faster and reduce carbon emissions. But that doesn't mean the transition should happen overnight.