The AI revolution will cut nearly $1 trillion a year out of S&P 500 budgets, largely from agents and robots doing human jobs
https://fortune.com/2025/08/19/morgan-stanley-920-billion-sp-500-savings-ai-agentic-robots-jobs/
The AI revolution will cut nearly $1 trillion a year out of S&P 500 budgets, largely from agents and robots doing human jobs
https://fortune.com/2025/08/19/morgan-stanley-920-billion-sp-500-savings-ai-agentic-robots-jobs/
43 Comments
“will” is a very strong word. I would have gone with “may”. Or “projected to” .
> Corporate America is on the brink of a radical transformation as artificial intelligence adoption could **unlock nearly $1 trillion a year in savings**, according to a sweeping new analysis by Morgan Stanley. The bank calculates 90% of jobs will be touched in some way by AI automation or augmentation, with cost savings flowing directly from **reduced headcount, natural attrition, and automation of knowledge-intensive but routine tasks.**
> AI humanoid robotics could generate $920 billion in net annual benefits for companies in the S&P 500. The lion’s share of those savings, analysts say, will come from lowering payroll expenses and **reducing the need for human workers in repetitive or process-heavy roles.**
> Not all industries will feel the effects equally. **Consumer staples distribution and retail, real estate management, and transportation are among the most exposed sectors**, with potential AI-driven productivity benefits exceeding 100% of forecast 2026 earnings. Health care equipment and services, autos, and professional services also face major disruption and opportunity.
> By contrast, industries that already run lean on labor relative to earnings—such as semiconductors and hardware—show comparatively lower AI value potential.
They will do the jobs badly.
Customer service bots that are not authorized to help you at all, they just chat to you giving the illusion of costomer service.
People here laugh at “oh but why don’t they automate CEOs, they are the most expensive worker”, but they don’t understand that the CEO is not the boss, they are just the Shepards dog, the Shepards in this case are shareholders
This means, CEOs and other workers alike will get automated as soon as it won’t affect earnings, and that’s when we will know that AI will start to be good enough to replace labor
The AI revolution will cut nearly $1 trillion a year out of S&P 500 budgets, largely from agents and robots doing human jobs vs no it won’t.
15 years ago everyone was convinced 3D printing would upend manufacturing as we knew it and by 2025 most items would be 3D printed and we would have a massive disruption in factories and the fanboys were running around insisting that “the economics of scale have been broken!” and all that crap.
I believe this now as much I believe that back then .
Do any of you honestly believe those S&P 500 companies will willingly share that $1 trillion with any of us?
That’s going to shareholders and CEOs.
A trillion lost from the economy, lost wages, lost groceries, lost birthday presents, lost school clothes.
That’s a recession, is what that is.
Maybe stop being cheerleaders for AI?
They will only do a shitty job for so long before realizing the stupid choices they’ve made
And then a few more trillions once the bubble bursts…
These predictions are worthless, because nobody knows exactly what skill level LLMs will have in 6 months, and whether AI can be made profitable… Or just break even.
The biggest threat to the economy is the courts have allowed LLMs to rip off other people’s intellectual property, slice and dice it, and sell the results. There is already very established precedent that unlicensed remixes are not ok. This is the biggest IP theft in history.
What’s going to happen when all creatives can’t earn a living because they’re competing against other people profiting from infinite clones of their own work?
I don’t really have a problem with people using A.I. tools to do their jobs more efficiently. That’s just another type of hammer being invented. It’s a continuation of technology increasing worker productivity. But allowing silicon valley douchebags to steal everyone else’s work so they can profit from it? It’s unreal that the courts have allowed it to go on this long. They should be beholden to the same copyright laws as everyone else. They’re more than welcome to use whatever is in the public domain to train their algorithms. That is precisely what the public domain is for.
You mean the agents that, after years of development and billions wasted on developing them, work at BEST ~35% of the time?
It will destroy any company dumb enough to switch solely to them over people.
This is just hype and what business idiots want you to think. It’s not guaranteed to wipe out jobs, but they’re relying on you to believe it will.
So $1 trillion less in consumer demand? Because this money isn’t trickling down, it’s being hoarded.
why say it like that? favouring AI over human beings will remove $1 Trillion a year of wages feeding into the economy, largely from agents and robot stealing food from the mouths of humans, and the roofs from over their heads. A question – who exactly do these parasitic companies think is going to be buying their shit? and with what, given the money being paid to humans will be below poverty level?
But once these corporations are hooked and reliant on A.I., the A.I. suppliers will raise the prices and charge two Trillion. How? Because the people who understood the tasks to manually do the work will have jobs in other fields.
That is a trillion that humans are not going to earn and also not going to spend.
Reminder: Morgan Stanley lost $58 billion dollars during the 2008 banking crisis and were still selling CDOs right up until the market collapsed. The very instruments that helped sink the global economy were being pushed on clients even as internal models showed the risks.
Trusting bankers to give you a neutral picture of the future of the economy is like putting a ferret up your trouser leg and trusting it not to bite you on the balls
What happens when business needs change in these “fast-paced environments”?
So you mean 1 trillion less PIB? Economist are gonna be proud of themselves
S&P500 is primaryly where all the retirement savings of the entire west civilization are invested. If you really wipe a triillon a year of them, it’s literally the end of the world.
I don’t believe this is going to happen, but if it does, prepare for entire economic collapse.
1 trillion dollars just *gone.* It isn’t going to employees who then invest it back into the living economy. It’s just gone. AI takes money to use but gives nothing back. At least with humans, we like to buy stuff and pay rent. Nobody likes call centers, they’re usually inefficient hell holes with the most bitter people imaginable running them, but hey, they still buy groceries, media, and housing. No one is saving 1 trillion dollars here, it is literally just vanishing. In order to compensate for these supposed waves of AI replacement, capitalism needs an entire rework from the ground up.
> as employees are freed up to spend more time on higher value-added activities
All the advancements in technology we’ve had in the past decade or two were supposed to do that already. Productivity (the amount your employer makes off your labor) has skyrocketed, but real wages have stagnated, and people are working more hours than ever just to survive. If anyone thinks they’ll be working less or doing more meaningful labor, I’ve got a bridge to sell them.
I look forward to the day this blows up in these companies’ faces.
And have we solved the other end of this equation where people won’t have money to put back into said economy?
One trillion dollars that flows up to the owners will suddenly stop flowing down to the workers
To the consumers
To everyone who hasn’t already won capitalism
“Savings” is one way to put it. You could also say “$1 trillion in lost wages” or “$1 trillion in wealth transferred from lower and middle classes to the rich”
Corporate America is on the brink of a radical collapse
Fixed the opener. It’s only a matter of time before there isn’t enough consumers with the aggressive push to replace headcounts with AI.
Yes it’s known not all jobs can be reduced, but we are heading the direction that people will be dying because they can’t find jobs that pay enough to support living cuz God forbid we increase minimum wage
Like IF they just allowed some wages to grow more people would spend money instead of struggling to survive and that would have led to even bigger profits. But nooooooo got to reduce how much the peasants make so the 1000 billionaires can grow their higher scores, I mean money they don’t need
They are assuming that AI will be able to make decisions *independent* of human inputs or feedback, which so far does not seem to have a solid track record. You have to be 110% certain that said AI can make logical and sound decisions based on accurate information, otherwise you’re going to see a lot of chaos and lost revenue.
more automated and hidden fuckeries ahead on the stock market !
Oh wow, this sounds pretty scary.
*(Closes article)*
*(Opens next article)*
“Investors are pulling out of AI, signaling the bubble is about to burst…”
Oh. Well, ok then
In other news, the economy is expected to have workers get paid 1 trillion less, and federal income taxes will decrease by 300 billion….
But where is the trillion coming from when the workers can’t pay into the economy because they don’t have salaries?
When all of a sudden businesses are failing because of no demand for their products is it then they will realise that the capital model is built on the worker? Or are they going to give ais money when ais do not have to buy anything?
So 1 trillion not going to employee pockets
1 trillion hoarded by billionaires for themselves
This is not a good thing. It’s a society collapse level threat.
So salaries should increase by a Trillion across the board, right?
Right?
Who is buying these products and services? Are the prices gonna come down significantly due to the efficiencies or the efficiencies going to contribute directly to margin?
Asking for a friend. How do you short the AI market?
And how much money will be lost due to poor quality?
The headlines are either AI sucks or it’s the end of the world. Almost as if AI is writing it itself. It will likely be somewhere in between and likely skewed more to downside than upside.
meanwhile every other post reports all the overpromised AI projects completely failing to generate any revenue and companies re-hiring the workers they fired to be replaced by AI… how do people *still* believe this shit?
Weird… Isn’t that the exact figure Altman said he would need to actually make LLMs worth while?
It’s almost like there’s no reason for it to exist if that money could be in the hands of the working class. The job will still get done.
This seems to run pretty counter to that MIT paper saying 95% of AI initiatives failed to demonstrate increased productivity or profitability.
Feels like spin to keep the bubble inflated.
I think it’s past time to drag them out from there metaphorical castles and remind them what happens to greed at this level
Even if LLMs leaped forward breaking the diminishing returns that they’re clearly hit. Where is all the energy needed to power them coming from? It sure isn’t the grid. In case they missed it AI has yet to prove profitable according to MIT. None of this is panning out yet these article keep getting more and more ridiculous with their predictions.