Rollout
of AI may need to be slowed to ‘save society’, says JP Morgan boss
Jamie
Dimon warns of civil unrest but Nvidia’s Jensen Huang argues tech will create
rather than destroy jobs
John
Collingridge and Graeme Wearden in Davos
Wed 21
Jan 2026 19.18 CET
Jamie
Dimon, the boss of JP Morgan, has said artificial intelligence “may go too fast
for society” and cause “civil unrest” unless governments and business support
displaced workers.
While
advances in AI will have huge benefits, from increasing productivity to curing
diseases, the technology may need to be phased in to “save society”, he said.
Dimon
said companies and governments could not ignore AI or “put your head in the
sand”. The Wall Street lender would probably have fewer employees in five
years’ time as it rolled out AI, he told an audience at the World Economic
Forum in the Swiss resort of Davos.
“Your
competitors are going to use it and countries are going to use it,” he said.
“However, it may go too fast for society and if it goes too fast for society
that’s where governments and businesses [need to] in a collaborative way step
in together and come up with a way to retrain people and move it over time.”
Dimon
said local governments may need to use assistance programmes that supported
wages and offered retraining, relocation and early retirement.
The 2
million commercial lorry drivers in the US were an example of an area that may
need support as driverless trucks hit the road, he said.
“Should
you do it all at once, if 2 million people go from driving a truck and making
$150,000 a year to a next job [that] might be $25,000? No. You will have civil
unrest. So phase it in,” Dimon said.
“If we
have to do that to save society … Society will have more production, we are
going to cure a lot of cancers, you’re not going to slow it down. How do you
have plans in place if it does something terrible?”
Dimon,
who was speaking before Donald Trump’s address, offered a restrained critique
of the US president’s increasingly combative approach to Europe and Nato and
demands to take over Greenland.
“If the
goal is to make them stronger rather than fragment Europe, I think that’s OK,”
Dimon said. “I would be using our moral persuasion, our economic persuasion,
our intelligence and military to push Europe to do the things that’s right for
Europe. The leadership of Europe has to do it, it really can’t be done by
America.”
Dimon
revealed his concerns about Trump’s immigration clampdown, calling for
“internal anger” over the issue to be calmed down.
“I don’t
like what I’m seeing with five grown men beating up little women,” Dimon said,
referring to scenes of violence involving Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE) officers. Rounding up criminals was one thing, Dimon added, but he would
like to see data showing who had been rounded up and whether they had broken
the law.
Dimon
said many migrants played important roles in the US economy, such as in
healthcare, hospitality and agriculture. “We all know them. They are good
people and they should be treated that way,” he said.
Playing
down fears of AI-driven job losses, Huang told the meeting in Davos that
“energy’s creating jobs, the chips industry is creating jobs, the
infrastructure layer is creating jobs … jobs, jobs, jobs”.
He added:
“This is the largest infrastructure buildout in human history, this is going to
create a lot of jobs.”
Many of
those jobs related to tradecraft, Huang said, such as plumbers, electricians,
construction, steelworkers, network technicians, and people who install
equipment for AI rollout. This was already pushing up salaries in this area in
the US, he added, for people involved in building chip factories or AI
datacentres.
Huang
also argued that AI robotics was a “once-in-a-generation” opportunity for
Europe, as the region had an “incredibly strong” industrial manufacturing base.
“This is
your opportunity to now leap past the era of software,” he argued, an area
where Silicon Valley has long outperformed Europe.
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