Bank Executives’ AI Talk Takes Frightening Turn for Workers

Wall Street leaders’ rhetoric about the impact of artificial intelligence on their firms has taken a dystopian turn.

At Standard Chartered Plc, Chief Executive Officer Bill Winters said Tuesday he’s replacing “lower-value human capital” with financial and technology capital to cut 8,000 support roles over the next four years. A week earlier, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. President and Chief Operating Officer John Waldron described his firm’s traditional operations as a “human assembly line” ripe for automation.

Even in finance, where executives are known for talking tough, discussions of jobs used to be delicate matters. Wells Fargo & Co. CEO Charlie Scharf said at a conference ...