Is AI replacing dev roles at Goldman Sachs? As strange as the question sounds, it is true that Goldman Sachs is now set to employ an AI engineer from artificial intelligence startup Cognition, allowing the autonomous tool to join its ranks. The bank is testing out an AI program named Devin, which is being touted as the “world’s first AI software engineer.” The AI employee is capable of working on coding assignments independently, taking on the tasks of a full-stack engineer with ease.
While Goldman Sachs is set to test out one AI engineer for now, the company plans to employ thousands of Devins eventually. Devin AI is certainly a big milestone for Goldman Sachs and Cognition, however, employees are not as enthralled by this advancement of technology. The job market has already grown hostile to workers who are being replaced by AI experts, but soon enough, even these experts might become redundant in some roles once companies are able to trust AI to handle a task from start to finish without any supervision.
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Goldman Sachs AI Engineer Presents an Unnerving Prospect for Many Employees
Goldman Sachs reportedly has 12,000 human developers, and it is now introducing one non-human collaborator to the numbers. The autonomous coder first came to light last year, when Cognition revealed the tool and its capabilities through demo videos that depicted its ability to work and reason independently. According to the company, the AI is not replacing dev roles at Goldman Sachs but instead providing an opportunity for employees and AI to work side by side to elevate the quality and quantity of work done at the organization.
Exploring the idea of a “hybrid” workforce, the company is keen to augment its performance by getting the AI to handle tasks that engineers find tiresome or repetitive to perform. Most cases of AI implementation come with a similar explanation—that the tools are designed to help their employees, not replace them—but these claims have the markings of an empty promise, which employees are reluctant to trust.
“Initially, we will have hundreds of Devins [and] that might go into the thousands, depending on the use cases,” Goldman tech chief Marco Argenti told CNBC. Expanding further on the idea, Argenti told Fortune, “It’s really about people and AIs working side by side.” He also added that “Engineers are going to be expected to have the ability to really describe problems in a coherent way and turn it into prompts…and then be able to supervise the work of those agents.”
Goldman Sachs’ Autonomous Coder Pilot Program Is Not Occurring in Isolation
While the credit for the Devin AI milestone may go to Goldman Sachs, it isn’t the only bank that has recruited an AI employee. Bank of New York Mellon recently hired digital employees from AI Hub, and these employees currently work on coding tasks and the validation of payment instructions. These employees have their own company logins and report to their manager like a regular employee would. Full-fledged AI employees are set to become a normalized part of the workforce in the coming years, operating independently, albeit with some degree of human direction and supervision.
Many of us have already encountered AI call center agents while struggling to resolve an urgent issue or two, and there has also been a rise in AI tools acting as a replacement for HR. As organizations continue to invest in AI, there are growing concerns around the threat they pose to jobs, as it is impossible to be receptive to the reassurance that employees that their numbers at an organization will remain unchanged once AI tools are introduced. While some employees will remain essential to keep things running, a lot of the work may be taken up by AI.
In 2025, Goldman Sachs’ AI hiring sends a clear message to employees regarding the future of work, but it also serves to incentivize workers to get familiar with AI. Those who master prompt engineering, AI lingo, and the ins and outs of such technology will play a critical role in the upkeep of such tools in the future. It’s not too late to get started down this path of building up expertise in the area of artificial intelligence.
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