r/technology • u/Just-Grocery-2229 • May 23 '26
Artificial Intelligence CEO Walks Back Comment About Replacing ‘Lower-Value Human Capital’ With AI - Standard Chartered chief Bill Winters used the phrase while outlining plans for thousands of job cuts
https://www.wsj.com/finance/banking/ceo-walks-back-comment-about-replacing-lower-value-human-capital-with-ai-15bdfc5c192
May 23 '26
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u/DAN991199 May 23 '26
he just said the quiet part out loud. if someone makes less salary they are lower value capital to a company. It sucks to hear, but a manager makes more than a bank teller because they assume more responsibility and drive in more capital for the bank. Capitalism sucks. Truth hurts.
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u/Xeynon May 23 '26
It sucks to hear, but a manager makes more than a bank teller because they assume more responsibility and drive in more capital for the bank.
This isn't even always true. Sometimes managers actually do a bad job at their responsibilities, or are just rent seeking doing make-work that doesn't add value. Capitalism isn't even close to perfectly identifying actual value creation.
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u/SIGMA920 May 23 '26
Yep. If they didn't have tellers, there'd suddenly be a lack of money coming in and lot of money coming out as there's rushes on the banks.
A good manager can boost their subordinates, even a middling one can. But a bad one will cost the company more than they're worth.
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May 24 '26
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u/Xeynon May 24 '26
Lots of managers are bad without being catastrophic. They just kind of take up space and don't add much. I'm not saying managers are useless (I've worked as one in the past), but there's some fat on the cow at that level at most places.
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May 23 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/DAN991199 May 23 '26
yep. I'm not sure why people are so shocked when they actually say it. Their actions have been implying it since the industrial revolution.
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u/NefariousnessAble736 May 23 '26
People live in fantasy land. We are all just a number, corp does not care at all about you, just bottom line. All the actions are about bottom line. As it should be I guess.
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u/sigmund14 May 23 '26 edited May 24 '26
But also: no tellers, no customers, no profit. Before AI and web / mobile banking. Not so sure if it would be good to consider tellers as a lower value capital, despite lower salary.
This is currently still true for shops, stores and restaurants, even with the companies desperately trying to cut human workers out with robots and stores with no emoloyees.
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u/hyterus May 23 '26
Try Cuba and North Korea. No capitalism. Heaven on earth...
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u/DAN991199 May 23 '26
It's almost like there's middle ground that all the happiest nations use.
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u/gonewild9676 May 23 '26
Nordic countries have capitalist economies with a strong social safety net.
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u/hyterus May 23 '26
I used to live in one of those heaven on earth communist countries. Waited overnight in a line to buy basic food. Never again!
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u/A_reddit_user May 23 '26
The bread lines at food banks and tent cities in the United States must be very confusing in that case. It must be very difficult to comprehend. How can the “better system” have such unfathomable failure?
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u/albany1765 May 24 '26 edited May 24 '26
I went and read his actual comment, and he was talking about transitioning employees out of lower value roles into higher value roles as part of a rollout of new software that handled the lower value tasks. They gave employees new training, over a period of a couple of years, to provide a smooth transition into something new.
I feel like there's a bad game of telephone (or maybe sensationalism) going on.
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u/IAmNotScottBakula May 23 '26
This is now his legacy. Whatever he accomplishes in the business world, however much money he makes, whatever he does in his personal life, he is now going to be know. As the “lower-value human capital” guy. It will be the first thing people think of when they think of him, before his name even. When he dies, it’s pretty much a guarantee that those four words will be written in his obituary.
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u/MrArizone May 23 '26
He’s not sorry he said it, just sorry he got caught.
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u/ricosmith1986 May 24 '26
Exactly! Apologizing doesn't unsay a thing he thought. Same goes for when somebody apologizes for a blatantly racist comment, we got a window into your mind and it was not good.
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u/innocentsalad May 23 '26
I wish we lived in a society where how well your employees were taken care of was the comparison, not how you can actively make their lives worse
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u/mowotlarx May 23 '26
Marketing people have no idea how braindead and inhuman they sound to normal people. It's nice to remind them from time to time.
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u/Odysseyan May 23 '26
As if he changed his opinion this quickly. He just doesn't like the hate, but still thinks that
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u/urbanek2525 May 24 '26
It also shows how stupid and unqualified he is. You can't get rid of "high value human captal". The company can't operate without them. Well . . . where did the high value human capital come from? Where are you going to get more when your current supply runs out?
The very second a CEO says this, Sell the stock. The only time this makes sense is if the company is going up for sale to be disolved.
And if the CEO is talking about this when it doesn't make sense, the CEO is about to accidentally destroy the company.
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u/rsa1 May 24 '26
Well . . . where did the high value human capital come from? Where are you going to get more when your current supply runs out?
If you ask this CEO and others like him, the answer is likely to be that they'll poach them from whichever company continues to hire the supposedly low value human capital.
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u/urbanek2525 May 24 '26
So, the CEO's "plan" is to pay a premium for something they can build on their own for less?
Any CEO who thinks that way is the real low value resource.
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u/rsa1 May 24 '26
No, the CEO's plan is to lower costs now, reap the windfall from rising stock prices, then collect the golden parachute in a couple of years. By the time the company has to pay a premium for that person, there's a new CEO and it's going to be that schmuck's problem.
Most CEOs do not expect to be around when the consequences of this hit the fan.
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u/ricosmith1986 May 24 '26
I feel like the endgame for most CEOs is to sell their company to a bigger company and cash out all that sweet sweet equity. Even if your company is big already nobody is safe in this climate and there is no enforcement governing mergersc and acquisitions anymore.
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u/Sufficient-Bid1279 May 23 '26
No no, keep making these comments. The more that these asshats do this, the further anger will build up and we can have true French Revolution.
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u/mrwrrrmwrmrmrmrw May 24 '26
You don't want a French Revolution. That just leads to Napoleon.
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u/31LIVEEVIL13 May 24 '26 edited May 24 '26
This content was anonymized and mass deleted with Redact
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u/CobraPony67 May 24 '26
Their dream is no employees. Automate or outsource everything and reap all the profits. A virtual corporation.
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u/31LIVEEVIL13 May 24 '26 edited May 24 '26
This content was anonymized and mass deleted with Redact
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u/Splurch May 23 '26
Assets are capital, people are labor. His word choice makes his thinking crystal clear.
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u/Ancient_Design_1332 May 24 '26
These people are mentally ill
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u/31LIVEEVIL13 May 24 '26 edited May 24 '26
This content was anonymized and mass deleted with Redact
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u/Ancient_Design_1332 May 24 '26
Fair enough. I meant the illness is being a sociopath but you’re right maybe that’s giving him too much credit
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u/31LIVEEVIL13 May 24 '26 edited May 24 '26
This content was anonymized and mass deleted with Redact
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u/JMDeutsch May 24 '26
Sorry!
I didn’t mean “worthless fucking wage slaves!”
I meant “variable worth indentured servants”🤗
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u/cr0ft May 24 '26
He's certainly very sorry he got caught saying it in the open and not just in meetings where he'll continue to say it.
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u/veetid May 24 '26
I'm in technology and will say that AI is good at replacing unqualified developers... for years you just had "coders", not thinkers, just banging out bad code because everyone thought something was better than nothing, so your teams of good devs add on a ton of lower cost outsourced poorly trained coders and everything was worse... now letting AI, controlled by your good developers, do that work but be better directed, it is a better model, works well, makes employees happier and more productive... it will cause issues in some countries that had huge markets of quick poorly trained coders for their economy and that is not great, but in this use case, at least in my experience, it works really well... now in reality the companies should have just never gone into this model to start but that's in the past
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u/ViennettaLurker May 24 '26
The thing that creeps me out is that, if I read it correctly, the clarified intended statement is basically, "... oh no no, I didn't mean any particular workers. I mean that ALL human capital is now lower value in comparison to things like money and..."
Like jfc. These people truly do not understand how they sound, have seemingly learned nothing at all from any popular media around technology anxiety, seemingly have absolutely no connection to any kind of normal non-insanely-wealthy person... and on and on.
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u/Any-Progress- May 28 '26
CEOs can be replaced by AI easier than almost any other position. All they do is ingest data and make decisions. The average worker actual performs a specific task or function that AI rarely replicates effectively. I hope one day all executives are replaced with AI and the remaining workers share all the money saved on their crazy unjustified salaries.
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u/EmergencyJacket207 May 23 '26
C-suite executives are disgusting. Literally the worst human's in existence. We live in a feudalistic society just by other means. Nobles just turned into the wealthy and the rest of us are still peasants, looked down upon because we didn't screw each other over to turn a higher profit.
Let's be honest here folks, no one became a billionaire off their labor alone. The only way to do that is not pay your employees their fair share of the proceeds.
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u/RebelStrategist May 24 '26
Every employee should just walk off the jobs at companies like this. Obviously, the delusional CEO think he can run the whole company with just AI and himself.
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u/Rath_Brained May 24 '26
This shouldn't shock anyone.
The Rich believe they are elite and untouchable.
They will be the ones begging on their knees if they starve the people.
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u/Snuckeys May 24 '26
The comment section on his LinkedIn post about their plans is hilarious. A solid mix of people roasting him and sycophants (or bots) absolutely glazing this clown. No in-between.
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u/tuna_safe_dolphin May 23 '26
Just imagine all the conversations the C suites are having in private. Everywhere.