SHRINK* -WORK- SHROUD : A.I.'S SCREAMING PROFIT ESSAY

DIRE PREDICTIONS about A.I.'s impact on employment have shaken up the finance class before, most recently in February when a bleak research report briefly joined the stock markets by predicting :

That A.I. would force well-paid professionals to take up Uber driving. Many major employers of white-collar workers describe A.I. technology as a tool that can eliminate the more tortured aspects of desk life, and say it will free-up office workers to pursue more valuable, higher-earning pursuits.

PROFITS soar at U.S. banks, and even around many, many organisations in the world as A.I. helps shrink work forces. Efficiency has improved as technology automates a range of industry roles.

Less than four months ago, Bank of America's chief executive, Brian T. Moynihan, volunteered in a TV interview what he would say to his 210,000 employees about the chance of artificial intelligence replacing human work.

'' You don't have to worry,'' he said. '' It's not a threat to their jobs.''

So very recently, after Bank of America reported $8.6 billion in profit for the first quarter - $1.6 billion more than the same period a year earlier - Mr. Moynihan struck a different tone.

The bank's bottom line, he said, was helped by shedding 1,000 JOBS through attrition by. '' eliminating work and applying technology, '' which he repeatedly specified was artificial intelligence.

He predicted more of that in the months and years to come. '' A.I. gives us places to go we haven't gone,'' Mr. Moynihan said.

The veneer of Wall Street longstanding assertion - that A.I. will enhance human work and not replace it - is rapidly peeling away, as evidenced by the current quarterly earnings season.

JPMorgan Chase, Citi, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo racked up  $47 billion in collective profits, up 18 percent, while shedding 15,000 employees.

ALL OF THEM credited A.I. to some degree with helping cut jobs and automate work in areas ranging from the so-called back office, where tens of thousands of employees fill out paperwork to comply with various laws and regulations, to the front office,  where seven-figured salaried professionals put together complicated financial transactions for corporate clients.

Unlike executives in Silicon Valley, few major financial figures are stating outright that A.I. is eliminating jobs.

Citi, for example, has pledged to shrink its workforce by 20,000  people through what one executive described to financial analysts last week as the company's ''productivity and efficiency journey.''

The bank is paying for A.I. software from Anthropic, Google, Microsoft and OpenAI, to automatically read legal documents, approve account openings, send invoices for trades and organize sensitive customer data, among other tasks, according to public statements by bank executives and two people familiar with Citi's systems.

Among the recent job cuts at Citi were scores of employees who were part of the bank's '' A.I. Champions and Accelerators '' program, according to the two people, who were not permitted by the bank to speak publicly.

The program involves Citi employees who perform their day jobs while also working to persuade their colleagues to adopt A.I. technologies.

This Master Essay continues. The World Students Society thanks Rob Copeland.