The rapid proliferation of artificial intelligence will prompt ‘civil unrest’ if governments and companies fail to protect workers from its displacing effects, says JPMorgan boss
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon warns that the rapid roll-out of artificial intelligence (AI) throughout society will cause “civil unrest” unless governments and companies work together to mitigate its effect on job markets.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Dimon said that although AI can deliver “a more productive society… [and] cure a lot of cancers”, the roll-out needs to be phased to stave off the potential for massive social unrest.
“My view is, ‘Don’t put your head in the sand.’ It is what it is. We’re going to deploy it. Will it eliminate jobs? Yes. Will it change jobs? Yes. Will it add some jobs? Probably. It is what it is,” said Dimon. “However, I do think it may go too fast for society. And if it goes too fast for society, that’s where government and business in a collaborative [need to] way step in together and come up with a way to retrain people or move it over time.”
Highlighting the example of the two million commercial truck drivers in the US, Dimon said that if AI is imposed on them in one fell swoop when effective driverless vehicles hit the road, all those people could potentially go from making $150,000 a year to $25,000 in their next jobs: “Should you do it all at once?… No, you will have civil unrest, so phase it in.”
Acknowledging that even JPMorgan will likely have fewer employees in five years due to its use of AI, Dimon went on to urge governments to plan for these eventualities now, by developing retraining, wage support and relocation programmes to support workers displaced by the technology. He added that governments would also need to develop new incentives for companies to slow their deployments of AI and ensure they provide income assistance.
“If a town loses a factory and they lose jobs, you have income assistance, relocation, early retirement, retraining. We may have to do that…to save society,” he said.
When interviewer Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor-in-chief at The Economist, pointed out that previous Trade Adjustment Assistance programmes in the US were “incredibly poorly done”, Dimon agreed, saying: “We need to be prepared to have something that works this time.”
Commenting further on JPMorgan’s own use of AI, Dimon said the Wall Street lender has so far developed around 500 use cases for the technology across its business units, noting while there are clear efficiency benefits to be gained from AI, it could also fundamentally change the business as it develops further.
“If you take it to the next step, agents, that could change your business, the speed at which things happen, how people access our systems,” he said, adding that companies will need to develop their AI capabilities to remain competitive, particularly in the financial sector given the explosion of fintech companies in recent years.
“If you put your head in the sand, you will lose. I think that was true 30 years ago, but it’s probably more true today. And the brain power and money that’s going to this [AI] thing is extraordinary. And so, if we don’t do our job faster, quicker, we’ll lose soon.”
Job losses have already begun hitting the tech sector itself, with firms globally cutting their workforces as they look to increase spending on and investment in AI tools. In October 2025, for example, Amazon laid off 14,000 employees, a decision that was specifically prompted and enabled by the firm’s AI investments.
In August 2025, the UK Trades Union Congress (TUC) warned that AI-fuelled economic growth is leaving workers behind and highlighted the importance of collective bargaining as the technology becomes more embedded in the workplace.
Noting that AI may be used by some employers to cut costs and automate existing processes, rather than invest, expand and innovate, it said in a report: “Such decisions will more likely displace or deskill workers rather than augment, expand or retrain the workforce as part of technological upgrading.”
The paper’s authors noted that if machines do more tasks and reduce the demand for skilled workers or for labour overall, workers could become less able to command a fair share, with the surplus increasingly captured by employers and AI companies.
In November 2023, the Autonomy think tank in the UK argued that while automating jobs with large language models (LLMs) could lead to significant reductions in working time without a loss of pay or productivity, realising the benefits of AI-driven productivity gains in this way will require concerted political action.
The think tank added that this was because it is clear that productivity gains are not always shared evenly between employers and employees, and depend on “geographic, demographics, economic cycle and other intrinsic job market factors” such as workers’ access to collective bargaining.
To deliver positive AI-led changes for workers and not just employers, Autonomy recommended setting up “automation hubs”, underpinned by trade union and industry agreements, to boost the adoption of LLMs in ways that are equitable.
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Thomas Wrona
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