What do business leaders say about AI?

Seventeen people who run or fund large companies outside the technology industry, eighteen quotations. They are the group that will decide most of the handovers of decisions to machines, and most of them speak about AI as forecasters of other people's jobs. Jim Farley of Ford says it will 'replace literally half of all white-collar workers in the U.S.'. Martin Sorrell says there will be fewer art directors, copywriters and media planners. Jamie Dimon's shareholder letter says deployment may move 'faster than workforce adaptation'. Against them, Emma Walmsley of GSK says the answer to every question is 'all about the people', Indra Nooyi says everybody has to go back to being a student, and Rory Sutherland doubts humanity will resist using AI 'as a shortcut to ok but not exceptional results'.

This is one of nine slices of the register of what the world's leaders say about AI, which sets out how every quotation was found and checked twice against its source. 17 chief executives, chairs and investors, 18 quotations, grouped by region.

UK#

There are going to be fewer art directors and copywriters. There'll be fewer people in media planning and buying.

Sir Martin Sorrell, Founder and Executive Chairman of S4 Capital; former CEO of WPP, United Kingdom. Interview with City AM on S4 Capital job cuts, 4 June 2026. City AM. Sorrell said it would be dishonest to claim AI will not reduce headcount in advertising.

Used correctly, AI could be the next big thing for growth, productivity and creative innovation. But I have my doubts that humanity will ever be able to resist the temptation and pitfalls of using AI as a shortcut to ok but not exceptional results.

Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman of Ogilvy UK, United Kingdom. MAD//Amplified article, 'Rory Sutherland: My AI advice? Don't be useless', ahead of MAD//UpNorth, 12 February 2025. madfestlondon.com. Sutherland was advising people to protect the parts of their work that machines cannot shortcut.

Everyone thinks the answer to every question these days is AI. It isn't. The answer to every question these days is all about the people.

Dame Emma Walmsley, Chief Executive Officer of GSK, United Kingdom. Columbia Business School Distinguished Speaker Series, in conversation with Dean Costis Maglaras, 18 October 2024. Columbia Business School. Walmsley described AI's value in drug discovery while arguing that the quality of a team still decides outcomes.

Europe#

We're facing up to what will be the third global revolution in human history after the agricultural and industrial revolutions – the AI revolution.

Ana Botín, Executive Chair of Banco Santander, Spain. Executive chair's speech to the Banco Santander annual general meeting, 4 April 2025. santander.com. Official English version of the speech published by Banco Santander. Botín was setting out how Santander is deploying AI across the bank and committing to govern its use.

North America#

I think sometimes people spend a lot of time figuring out what AI can replace, but they don't think about what's gonna come and what it's gonna enable in the new jobs.

Mary Barra, Chair and Chief Executive Officer of General Motors, United States. Interview with Rebecca Jarvis for ABC News 'Good Morning America', filmed at the Corvette plant in Bowling Green, Kentucky, 15 May 2026. ABC News / Good Morning America. Barra said the net employment effect of AI is unpredictable and that new categories of work will emerge.

Everybody has to go back to being a student. It's not that you can just say it doesn't affect me.

Indra Nooyi, Former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of PepsiCo; corporate board director, United States. Interview with Emma Hinchliffe, Fortune, 12 May 2026. Fortune. Nooyi argued that company directors who will not re-educate themselves on AI cannot properly oversee management.

There is a possibility that AI deployment will move faster than workforce adaptation to new job creation. In prior technological transformations, labor had time to adjust and retrain.

Jamie Dimon, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of JPMorganChase, United States. Annual letter to shareholders, JPMorganChase 2025 Annual Report, 6 April 2026. jpmorganchase.com. Dimon argued that AI will eliminate some jobs and create others, and that the speed of deployment may outrun retraining.

When we talk about the economic disruption of AI, most of the conversation is about jobs. That's an enormously important question, and one that goes beyond economics. Work provides income, purpose, and dignity.

Larry Fink, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of BlackRock, United States. Annual chairman's letter to investors, March 2026. blackrock.com. Fink argued that AI risks concentrating wealth among the firms and investors positioned to capture it unless market participation is widened.

The human experience has to stay at the center of all design, because the technology doesn't replace human ingenuities and humans.

Julie Sweet, Chair and Chief Executive Officer of Accenture, United States. Interview with TIME, 14 October 2025. TIME. Sweet was arguing that AI adoption succeeds or fails on how work and workers are redesigned, not on the technology itself.

It's very clear that AI is going to change literally every job. Maybe there's a job in the world that AI won't change, but I haven't thought of it.

Doug McMillon, President and Chief Executive Officer of Walmart, United States. Walmart's Opportunity Summit at the company's Bentonville, Arkansas headquarters, September 2025. Entrepreneur. McMillon said Walmart would retrain staff rather than assume roles simply disappear.

Artificial intelligence is gonna replace literally half of all white-collar workers in the U.S.

Jim Farley, President and Chief Executive Officer of Ford Motor Company, United States. Aspen Ideas Festival, in conversation about the 'essential economy', 27 June 2025. Fortune. Farley was arguing that skilled trades and the 'essential economy' deserve more attention as AI absorbs office work.

It's part the way out of the bottle and it's enormously important and it's going to be done by somebody so we may wish we'd never seen that genie, or it may do wonderful things.

Warren Buffett, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Berkshire Hathaway, United States. Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders meeting, Omaha, 4 May 2024. Fox Business. Buffett was comparing AI to the development of nuclear weapons, which he described as letting a genie out of the bottle.

We believe Artificial Intelligence can save lives – if we let it. Medicine, among many other fields, is in the stone age compared to what we can achieve with joined human and machine intelligence working on new cures.

Marc Andreessen, Co-founder and general partner of Andreessen Horowitz, United States. His essay 'The Techno-Optimist Manifesto', published by Andreessen Horowitz, 16 October 2023. a16z.com. Andreessen was making the case that technological acceleration, including AI, is a moral good.

We believe any deceleration of AI will cost lives. Deaths that were preventable by the AI that was prevented from existing is a form of murder.

Marc Andreessen, Co-founder and general partner of Andreessen Horowitz, United States. His essay 'The Techno-Optimist Manifesto', published by Andreessen Horowitz, 16 October 2023. a16z.com. Andreessen was arguing against slowing or restricting AI development.

Africa#

Africa must have a seat at the table where governance, practices, and protocols for artificial intelligence (AI) are being developed.

Tony Elumelu, Chairman of Heirs Holdings and United Bank for Africa, Nigeria. Seminar on 'Boosting Productivity Growth in the Digital Age' at the World Bank/IMF Annual Meetings, Washington DC, 20 October 2025. Vanguard (Nigeria). Elumelu argued that Africa must be included in setting global AI rules and that digital inclusion is economic inclusion.

We cannot afford to be spectators in the AI revolution. Africa must be a producer of solutions, not just a consumer of technologies developed elsewhere.

Strive Masiyiwa, Founder and Executive Chairman of Cassava Technologies and Econet Group, Zimbabwe. Unstoppable Africa 2025 forum, held on the sidelines of the 80th UN General Assembly, September 2025. TechAfrica News. Masiyiwa was announcing plans for AI data-centre 'factories' across Africa and arguing the continent must own its AI capacity.

Asia#

If a farmer in Bihar can speak to a computer in Maithili or Bhojpuri or whichever language and gets the right answer, you have made AI so much more accessible to him. That's a big area of focus for me.

Nandan Nilekani, Co-founder and Chairman of Infosys; architect of India's Aadhaar system, India. Interview with Rest of World, 21 July 2025. Rest of World. Nilekani argued that India's contribution should be making AI usable by ordinary people in their own languages rather than building frontier models.

Actually in a country like us, it (AI) will create jobs because it will empower people with the little skill or no skill, will empower them with information skill so that they can perform a higher level of jobs.

N. Chandrasekaran, Chairman of Tata Sons, India. Panel discussion at the B20 Summit India, New Delhi, 25 August 2023. Business Today. Chandrasekaran argued that in a developing economy AI raises the capability of low-skilled workers rather than displacing them.

What chief executives say, and what they do not#

Read the eighteen lines for the verb. Replace, change, eliminate, enable, extend, transform: every one is about what the technology will do to jobs, most often jobs in other companies. What none of these leaders says is which decisions inside their own company a machine now makes, who can stop it, or what their people must remain able to do. Larry Fink comes closest, naming work as 'income, purpose, and dignity', and Julie Sweet, whose firm sells the deployments, says the technology 'doesn't replace human ingenuities and humans'. The shareholder letter is the document in which a chief executive could say which decisions have been handed over; the page on what a board should ask about AI says what to look for when it does not.

India, Africa and the other AI conversation#

Nandan Nilekani, N. Chandrasekaran, Strive Masiyiwa and Tony Elumelu are having a different conversation from the American and British leaders. Theirs is about access: a farmer in Bihar getting the right answer in Maithili, low-skilled workers empowered rather than displaced, a continent that must 'be a producer of solutions, not just a consumer', a seat at the table where the rules are written. It is the same question as Lula's and Kagame's on the government slice, asked by the people who will build the products.

The decision that stays with you#

For every leader on this page, and every reader who runs anything, the decision is the same: which decisions a machine may make in the organisation's name, who can stop each one, what its people must remain able to do without the machine, and how anyone would know if it went wrong. That is the argument of Rules Before Tools, and the measurable risk sits there, in the handover of decisions to machines and what happens to human judgement afterwards.

What these quotations do not show#

Chief executives speak to markets, regulators and their own staff at once, and a shareholder letter is a strategy document as well as a view. Twelve of the seventeen are American or British; no chief executive from Japan, China, Latin America or the Gulf is here yet, and Mukesh Ambani, Akio Toyoda, Jane Fraser, Bob Iger and Bernard Arnault were checked and left out because no verbatim, on-topic line could be read at source. Strive Masiyiwa's quotation rests on a single trade outlet. Chandrasekaran's line is from 2023 and Andreessen's from a 2023 manifesto; both predate the models now deployed. Farley's sentence is the shortest in the register and is included because it is the most repeated.