Citadel founder Ken Griffin says AI is coming for white-collar jobs, but not at his firms
Ken Griffin shares the concern many anxious white-collar workers have about artificial intelligence.
Once-stable and well-paid jobs will be made obsolete, such as translators, by the technology, the billionaire founder of $77 billion hedge fund Citadel and market maker Citadel Securities said on Tuesday. The US should begin embracing "reskilling" to help people who may be at risk of losing their jobs, Griffin added.
"We need it in a profound way," he said. "There's talk about it, but there's no action on that front."
His own employees shouldn't start looking for a new gig just yet, though.
Despite the "tremendous" advancement of AI models, Citadel's business of producing market-beating returns is still squarely in the domain of humans, said Griffin at a Citadel Securities conference in New York.
"I would argue that the core business is research," he said, and the research that can identify an edge over other market participants comes from "the creativity, the ingenuity, the analysis of the people on our team who conduct fundamental research."
This isn't to say AI has no role in Griffin's firms. At the end of last year, each stock picker at Citadel got an AI assistant "to further accelerate their research process," though even then Griffin warned about "offloading human judgment."
Now, trading processes have been sped up by new technology, giving his investment staff more time to spend on research, he said on Tuesday.
As a business owner, he said AI is frightening because "you're seeing your competitive moats being filled in by bulldozers," forcing long-established companies to innovate faster than ever.
But he's predicting a "golden age" for entrepreneurs as barriers to starting a small business fall, and he's become more optimistic about AI overall despite the transformational changes it's likely to bring.
"It is hard on people, but ultimately our lives are better," he said.
"There's no doubt that you or I would rather live right here in 2026 than in 1926."
