This semi-monthly column highlights news, government documents, NGO/IGO papers, conferences, industry white papers and reports, academic papers and speeches, and central bank actions on the subject of AI’s fast paced impact on the banking and finance sectors. The chronological links provided are to the primary sources, and as available, indicate links to alternate free versions.

NEWS:

Here’s what Wall Street bank CEOs are saying about head count in the age of AI. Business Insider, January 18, 2026. Is AI coming for Wall Street’s jobs? As banks reported earnings this week, CEOs dropped more insight into how generative AI could boost productivity, replace some roles, and keep head count from growing. Banks, many of which became bloated during the frenzied deal boom of the pandemic, have been slimming down their ranks over the last few years. It’s becoming clearer that, despite dealmaking making a comeback, executives are signaling they want to do more with fewer people, leaning on AI to boost productivity and absorb additional work.We’ve highlighted some of the most revealing comments from bank CEOs and CFOs on head count and AI.

Markets brace for 2026 as investors flag potential AI overheating and uncertainty over Federal Reserve policy. GCN, January 17, 2026. Wall Street’s love affair with artificial intelligence just hit a reality check, and the honeymoon phase might be officially over. After three consecutive years of double-digit gains driven largely by AI overheating, investors are starting to ask uncomfortable questions about valuations, sustainability, and what happens when the music stops. The party isn’t necessarily ending, but someone’s definitely checking the bill and wondering who’s going to pay for all those expensive drinks. The ardor over investing in artificial intelligence may be fracturing. The boom in artificial intelligence that fueled record market highs in 2025 is shifting into an adulthood cycle in which investments are required to yield hard returns on capital outlays. Tom Essaye of Sevens Report noted that “the collective love for the space is now fractured” with the market actively separating the winners from the losers in the industry. Memory concerns, such as Micron, are up over 241% YTD, while the darlings of the trade, such as Oracle, are coming under the spotlight.

Why AI Threat Models In Finance Must Follow The Data, Not The Code. Forbes, January 7, 2026. AI has become the control plane of financial services, shaping fraud decisions, AML alerts, credit limits, pricing strategies and collections. Yet many banks and fintechs still view these systems as just another microservice behind an API gateway. That assumption is no longer a technical nuance. It is a board-level risk. In traditional software, attackers modify code. In AI-driven environments, they manipulate data and let the model learn incorrectly until that behavior is treated as legitimate.The average U.S. data breach now costs over $10 million. That turns AI data-pipeline integrity from an IT hygiene concern into a material balance-sheet topic. For financial institutions, threat modeling must shift away from diagrams focused purely on code to a life cycle view centered on data.

Future Proofing Your Career In An Era Of AI. Forbes, January 6, 2026. I used my holiday break to study research and talk to experts to better understand how AI is going to change the nature of work and what it means for my children, nieces and nephews. Much of what I learned was contradictory, confusing and inconsistent. Most employers expect AI and information processing technologies to transform their business by 2030. And most employees have anxiety about what that change means for their careers. But there seems to be no consensus on what that will mean for jobs overall or the opportunities young professionals will have going forward.

In fact, the one thing I read that made the most sense was written 75 years ago by Isaac Asimov. In his book I, Robot, Susan Calvin – who happens to work as a robopsychologist – points out that “The capable men are still at a premium in our society; we still need the man who is intelligent enough to think of the proper questions to ask,” even in the future where AI enabled robots largely run the world.

One big takeaway from this exercise is that AI job anxiety and predictions of white collar blood baths are a bit overblown. Most of the better analysis I studied on the future of work – from the World Economic Forum, The Wharton Mack Institute, IMF, Yale, and PwC – suggest AI will likely create more job opportunities than it destroys. For example, an analysis of AI’s impact on jobs by the Yale Budget Lab, indicates that the broader labor market has not experienced a discernible disruption since ChatGPT’s release 33 months ago. Eighty two percent of the 4,701 CEOs interviewed by PwC this year report that AI has increased or caused no change in headcount. A paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) found that reduced demand in AI exposed occupations are offset by productivity-driven increases in labor demand at AI-adopting firms.

Another thing that is clear is there will be a great upskilling and reskilling. The World Economic Forum Jobs Report forecasts that two thirds of work is becoming AI enabled and over a third of the skills you need to do your job will be completely new in the next several years – like becoming a robopsychologist. These skills will involve more than just AI fluency and adoption to elevate individual productivity. The top ways to create value in your career involve focusing on making complex and interdisciplinary processes run better by mining knowledge, fostering teamwork, and delivering value to customers. The top three skills that will distinguish them in an AI driven economy are their ability to think analytically, adapt, and influence their peers in the workplace according to World Economic Forum analysis.

2026 US Dollar Forecast: How the Fed, Government Spending, and AI Will Drive Volatility. Market Pulse, January 5, 2026. Heading into 2026, the US Dollar faces a complicated path driven by a conflict between the Federal Reserve and the government. While the Fed tries to stabilize the economy, the government is aggressively spending money through the new “One Big Beautiful Bill” Act. Experts predict a “V-shaped” year for the currency: the dollar is expected to weaken in the first six months, dropping from its current level of 99.00 down to around 94.00, as the Fed cuts interest rates to protect jobs. However, this dip should be temporary. By the second half of the year, the effects of the new government spending and trade tariffs will likely boost inflation, forcing interest rates back up and pushing the dollar back to or even above its starting level. Despite this predicted rebound, the dollar faces significant risks, including potential political fights over the debt limit, the possibility of the AI stock bubble bursting, and challenges from rival nations in the BRICS alliance.

CNBC: December 30, 2025.

• SoftBank has completed its $40 billion investment commitment to OpenAI, sources told CNBC’s David Faber.
• CNBC reported in February that the Japanese firm was finalizing a $40 billion investment in the ChatGPT maker at a $260 billion pre-money valuation.
• The rise of artificial intelligence applications has created a rush to invest in more data centers and connectivity solutions to support booming demand.

SoftBank Group has completed its $40 billion investment in OpenAI, a source familiar with the matter said on Tuesday, marking one of the largest private funding rounds ever and deepening founder Masayoshi Son’s bet on AI. SoftBank has been building one of the largest private technology investment programs in the world, with a particular focus on artificial intelligence and related infrastructure such as data centers. Visa says it has completed hundreds of secure, AI-initiated transactions with partners, arguing this proves agent driven shopping is ready to move beyond experiments. The company believes 2025 will be the last full year most consumers manually check out, with AI agents handling purchases at scale by the 2026 holiday season. Nearly half of US shoppers already use AI tools for product discovery, and Visa wants to extend that shift all the way through payment using its Intelligent Commerce framework. The pilots are already live in controlled environments, powering consumer and business purchases through AI agents tied to Visa’s payment rails. To prevent abuse, Visa and partners have introduced a Trusted Agent Protocol to help merchants distinguish legitimate AI agents from bots, with Akamai adding fraud and identity controls. While the infrastructure may be ready, the bigger question is whether consumers fully understand the risks of letting software spend their money.

PAPERS:

Bank for International Settlement (BIS)

Embracing gen AI: a comparison of Italian and US households. BIS Working Papers |  No 1322  |  14 January 2026. Use of generative artificial intelligence (gen AI) has grown very fast since late 2022. Many people now use gen AI tools for work, learning and daily tasks. Yet adoption does not look the same across countries. We compare households in Italy and the United States using two large and comparable surveys from 2024. The surveys ask people how often they use gen AI, how they expect to use it in the future and how much they trust it. They also collect information on age, gender, education and work status. This allows us to study who uses gen AI and why. We focus on both occasional and regular use. We also examine views about well-being, wealth, data protection and trust in institutions when people interact with these tools.

Artificial intelligence and growth in advanced and emerging economies: short-run impact. BIS Working Papers |  No 1321  | 19 December 2025. We study how generative artificial intelligence (AI) affects short-run growth across countries. Our analysis covers 56 economies and 16 industries. We combine two elements. First, industries differ in how much they rely on cognitive and knowledge-based tasks, and so differ in their exposure to AI. Second, countries differ in their readiness to adopt new technology, based on their digital infrastructure, human capital, innovation capacity and regulatory frameworks. We measure industry exposure using data from the United States and country readiness using the International Monetary Fund’s AI preparedness index. We then link these measures to the change in real value added in each country-industry pair between 2022 and 2023.

GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS:

Federal Reserve Bank, Richmond. Regional Business Surveys Special Questions. December 2025. 1. What is your outlook for the following in 2026…Do you currently provide your employees with artificial intelligence (AI) tools for use in their jobs?; At any point in 2026, how likely is your company to provide or continue to provide your employees with artificial intelligence (AI) tools for use in their jobs?  Does your company currently allow its employees to use artificial intelligence (AI) for any of the following work-related tasks? Please only consider AI applications your company officially permits employees to use (either managed directly by your company or public AI tools); At any point in 2026, will your company allow or continue to allow your
employees to use artificial intelligence (AI) for any of the following work-related tasks? Please only consider AI applications your company officially permits employees to use (either managed directly by your company or public AI tools)….

NGO/IGOs:

IMF New Skills and AI Are Reshaping the Future of Work. IMF. January 14, 2025. Policy choices will determine whether workers and firms are adequately prepared for the AI revolution. Technological change has reshaped job markets for centuries. But the benefits have not always been widely shared. As AI and digital technologies transform today’s workplace even those at the forefront of innovation are not immune to disruption as recent job cuts at major technology companies show. Yet new roles are also emerging, as others disappear. New skills, new tasks, and entirely new occupations are being created alongside automation, offering alternative pathways for prosperity. For workers, finding or keeping a job will increasingly depend on the ability to update skills or learn new ones. Our latest analysis of millions of online vacancies reveals the scale of the demand for new skills: one in 10 job postings in advanced economies and one in 20 in emerging market economies now require at least one new skill.

Why insurance companies should encourage solid AI risk management instead of excluding it OECD.AI. December 17, 2025. AI is deployed in nearly every industry, and many associated risks are now sharply in focus. As these risks become more consequential, businesses look at insurance coverage. Yet, recent news shows that some major insurance providers, such as AIG, Great American, and WR Berkley, have recently sought permission from U.S. regulators to explore the possibility of excluding liabilities tied to business use of AI tools. AI systems can lead to unexpected operational failures, such as biased hiring processes, discriminatory credit decisions, or misdiagnoses in healthcare. Such outcomes may expose businesses to legal and regulatory sanctions. Other possible failures, such as a customer support chatbot giving hallucinated responses, may result in liability determinations. These risks are neither theoretical nor trivial. Companies deploying AI systems should be expected to be prudent and responsible and not put their own brand, customers or suppliers at risk – especially when most of these risks can be avoided with good governance practices.

Can mid-sized economies come together to build frontier AI? OECD.AI. December 16, 2025.  Conventional wisdom presents mid-sized economies with two options for accessing advanced AI: rely on American or Chinese systems, or fall behind. Neither choice preserves the technological sovereignty that countries increasingly see as essential. But there is a third path we explore in detail in a recent memo. Collectively, nations outside the US-China duopoly possess substantial computing infrastructure, a majority of the world’s top researchers, and the growing political will to create a third path. The question is whether they can come together to make it work.