And at the American Business Forum in Miami on Thursday, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase laid out a provocative horizon for how AI will optimize work schedules within our lifetimes.
“It’s going to impact every application, every job, every customer interface,” Dimon said. “My guess is that in 20, 30, 40 years, developed countries will be working three and a half days a week and living a great life.”
He’s not talking hypothetically. Dimon turned JPMorgan into a live-fire AI lab. Approximately 2,000 people are building AI systems. Approximately 150,000 employees use large-scale language models in internal documents every week. And the bank runs hundreds of use cases, from fraud detection to legal review to settlement to marketing optimization.
Dimon’s three-and-a-half-day prediction hinges on that cumulative productivity. As AI absorbs the routine work, the time required for the same output may be reduced. But he is adamant that the transition will not be painless.
“It will cost jobs. People should stop sticking their heads in the sand,” he warned. Fortune’s The Most Powerful Women conference argues that to avoid social backlash, companies and governments need to create plans for retraining, income support, reassignment and even early retirement. He says the bank is built on the idea of repositioning.
He also emphasizes that the economics of AI are not the same as the economics of the Internet. This expansion requires both capital and power. Some of the hyped projects “don’t get the power they need,” he says. He added that investors should take on data center and AI infrastructure on a deal-by-deal basis, keeping in mind who gets the revenue, who bears the construction and technology risks, and what happens if the chip or plant fails, rather than buying the subject wholesale. In his words, some AI efforts will be “in a bubble,” but overall the technology “will likely pay off.”
Mr. Dimon consistently sends out a message to the organizers to stop the excessive intellectualization of model theology and develop it.
“Use it in any business,” he said.
JPMorgan also ran an AI masterclass for senior executives after many leaders within the company simply didn’t know what the current tools could do. (One of Dimon’s responses was, “I didn’t know you could read 100,000 documents with this.”)
Overall, the work of the future may be shorter in time, but it will be richer in value. if Leaders are doing the hard part now. That means modernizing data so that AI can actually use it (“We’re spending a lot of money converting data into the right format…we haven’t measured how much it costs,” Dimon said), investing beyond power constraints, and building a humane path of retreat for disappearing roles.
Dimon’s bet is that well-guided organizations can rebuild what machines have removed. That way, a three-and-a-half day week can be achieved without destroying the social contract.
“There’s a downside to technology, and it’s used by bad people,” Dimon said at the forum. “But please accept it.”
