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CORPORATE LEADERS THINK AI LIKELY TO BE BETTER AT MANY JOBS THAN THEIR CURRENT STAFF – BUT MASS UNEMPLOYMENT UNLIKELY
JACK BARNETT AND ABBY WALLACE NEARLY half of business leaders reckon AI could replace humans, new data out today shows, but experts think job losses caused by mass adoption of tools such as ChatGPT would be limited. Some 44 per cent of C-suite executives think AI could perform tasks to a similar or better quality than humans, according to a poll of more than 1,000 business decisionmakers by YouGov. The numbers illustrate smart technology’s capacity to trigger a huge shake up in the global workforce, helping
workers palm off remedial tasks to computers to free up time to spend on tackling more complex problems. Mundane legal chores have often been identified as an area which could be fobbed off to AI. “The [legal] profession needs to develop new skills, for instance to make best use of legal technology, but solicitors will continue to need soft skills that AI will not be capable of automating,” Lubna Shuja, president of the Law Society, told City A.M. Economists have argued stepping up usage of advanced technology could help
reverse a more than decade long trend of slowing productivity growth. Britain, the US and much of Europe have suffered from poor GDP growth since the 2008 financial crisis, mainly due to output improvements stalling. “We could see an overall productivity boost from [AI] technology of around 1.5 per cent based on our latest estimates,” Yael Selfin, chief economist at KPMG UK, told City A.M. Eleanor Lightbody, chief executive of Luminance, a company that makes legal AI tools, said one firm that uses its technology saved 40 per cent of the time
they would have spent on administrative tasks redeploying paralegals elsewhere. While some are concerned about a raft of layoffs, others are more sanguine. Jimmy McLoughlin, a former No 10 business advisor and now host of the podcast Jimmy’s Jobs of the Future, said that “while inevitably some jobs will go, hundreds of thousands if not millions of new roles will be created. “It’s not all doom and gloom for the human worker – particularly if you work in an SME or a small start-up, where the value of a real person is less likely to be replaced by a machine,” he continued.
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HSBC hit by further Ping An complaint CHRIS DORRELL THE ONGOING row between HSBC and its largest shareholder Ping An stepped up a notch yesterday after the Chinese insurer said the bank was exaggerating the costs of spinning off its Asian division. Ping An has long pushed for a restructuring of the lender, calls which have been repeatedly rebuffed by HSBC’s leadership who argue it would impose significant costs. In a rare statement, Ping An said they had been “extremely disappointed by HSBC management’s consistent closed-minded attitude to all solutions” and said the firm was refusing to “countenance any benefits” of a break-up. Anger among Asian shareholders increased when HSBC was barred from issuing dividends during the Covid-19 pandemic as a result of its London listing. Most of the bank’s profits come from the eastern continent. An HSBC spokesperson said: “It is our judgment, supported by [third-party advice], that alternative structural options will not deliver increased value for shareholders.” Ping An will support a motion at the bank’s forthcoming AGM on 5 May, which would require it to give regular updates on the possibility of restructuring, including the mooted spin-off.
Credit Suisse in High Court in case linked to crisis-era mortgage-backed securities BEN LUCAS CREDIT Suisse is set to appear at the High Court in London tomorrow to defend itself against a $160m (£129m) claim over allegations the Swiss bank made “fraudulent misrepresentations” related to the sale of residential mortgage-
backed securities. The claim, brought by Loreley Financing, a subsidiary of German bank IKB, argues it was misled by Credit Suisse when it made a $100m investment back in 2007, which eventually collapsed in value. The trial is set to last eight weeks, and is expected to hear evidence
from several former Credit Suisse staff involved at the time. The sale of residential mortgagebacked securities by Credit Suisse and other banks is regarded as one of the main causes of the 2008 global financial crisis, resulting in billions in losses for investors and a global economic slump.
Credit Suisse was forced to pay $5.28bn to the US Department of Justice (DoJ) in 2017 to settle its investigation into the bank. “Credit Suisse claimed its mortgage-backed securities were sound, but in the settlement announced today the bank concedes that it knew it was peddling
investments containing loans that were likely to fail,” the DoJ said then. Loreley said in a statement that the bank “now seeks to distance itself from the DoJ's comments”. Credit Suisse has paid out hundreds of millions of dollars to settle similar claims since then. It declined to comment on the case.
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