Citadel CEO says AI technology has become more powerful

Citadel CEO Ken Griffin said AI has become profoundly more powerful than it was nine months ago. He made the comments during a conversation with professors at Stanford Business School. Griffin said he returned home one Friday and realized the technology would have a dramatic impact on society.

Griffin had previously described AI as garbage during a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January. He had been viewed as one of the more prominent skeptics of the technology.

Griffin said AI now performs work that finance professionals with master's and PhD degrees would complete over weeks or months. He added that the technology completes the same tasks in hours or days. He noted that AI-assisted software engineering provides productivity gains of 15 to 25 percent.

Griffin said the impact on research appears more significant, with work that once took years now finished in days or weeks. Griffin stated that both companies and workers will need to adapt. He said career success will depend on becoming lifelong learners.