There are only three stock traders left at U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs, compared to 500 traders 15 or 20 years ago, as all the rest of the trade work has been undertaken by robots, according to the company's president David Solomon at the recent Milken Institute Global Conference held in California.

Replacing traders with robots is an inevitable trend thanks to the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI). Robots are better at processing data than humans, which is essential to finance.

However, robots have only replaced simple and repetitive jobs. For example, behind the trader reduction at Goldman Sachs is the fact that over 9,000 engineers have been added. The shift in the company's employee structure sheds light on how modern technology is upgrading the traditional financial industry.

AI may cost employees doing uncomplicated work their jobs in the short term. But in the long run, AI will create new jobs which require more advanced technologies and abilities, skills that the unemployed could be trained in. As a result, the overall quality of a country's human resources will improve and the industrial structure will be upgraded.

In addition to the financial industry, AI has also been applied to other areas such as self-service stores and restaurants, leading to many workers under the traditional economic model losing their jobs. It is important then for people to seek out new skills related to jobs involving comprehensive analysis which cannot easily be replaced by robots.

(This is an edited excerpt of an article published in Guancha.gmw.cn on May 14)