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BlackRock CEO Larry Fink warns that AI could exacerbate income inequality, mirroring the post-Cold War era's wealth concentration and potentially leading to social unrest. He questions capitalism's ability to evolve and include more people as owners of growth.
AI 生成摘要
貝萊德執行長拉里·芬克警告，人工智慧（AI）可能重蹈冷戰後財富集中於少數人的覆轍，加劇所得不平等，並可能引發社會動盪。他質疑資本主義能否演進以讓更多人成為成長的擁有者。
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The world is on the brink of repeating post-Cold War mistakes that widened global income inequality, according to a Wall Street chief—and it might be about to do the same with AI.
More wealth was created in the decades after the Cold War than in any era before, BlackRock (BLK) CEO Larry Fink told the billionaires and heads of state gathered at Davos this week. That wealth, he said, "accrued to a far narrower share of people than any healthy society can sustain."
Now AI threatens to do the same, according to Fink, leader of the massive money manager. Those in the room, he said, risked being "out of step with the moment: elites in an age of populism." The test, he said, is "whether capitalism can evolve to turn more people into owners of growth—instead of spectators watching it happen."
The head of the world's largest asset manager is warning that AI could repeat the pattern of globalization, concentrating gains among asset owners while displacing millions of workers. Early data on hiring and wages suggests it might already be happening.
Globalization gutted blue-collar jobs starting in the 1990s. Manufacturing workers were told to retrain, but many never recovered, and towns that depended on them were hollowed out. Much of the gains of a new era went elsewhere, and these changes helped spark a populist backlash still reshaping affairs on both sides of the Atlantic.
Federal Reserve data shows that the wealthiest 1% of American households now hold 31% of all net worth, while the bottom half of households owns less than 3%. That gap has widened since the Fed began tracking it in 1989.
"Prosperity isn't just growth in the aggregate," Fink said. "It can't be measured by GDP or the market caps of the world's largest companies alone. It has to be judged by how many people can see it, touch it, and build a future on it."
Just as globalization emptied American and European factory floors, Fink warned, AI could do the same to those in the cubicle class. "Early gains are flowing to the owners of models, data, and infrastructure," he said. "The open question is what happens to everyone else."
Microsoft researchers ranked occupations by AI vulnerability last year. The top of the list was almost entirely white-collar, with translators, journalists, data scientists, and financial advisors among the most vulnerable. Jobs requiring physical labor or direct human interaction, like nursing assistants and massage therapists, ranked lowest.
"'If AI does to white-collar work what globalization did to blue-collar, we need to confront that directly," Fink told the crowd in Davos, suggesting that leaders drop the "abstractions about 'the jobs of tomorrow'" and make real plans for sharing AI's economic gains.
Fink's prescription, offered in a conversation at Davos with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, was for pensions to invest more in AI infrastructure—the kind of assets BlackRock manages.
"We need to make sure that the average pensioner and the average saver is part of that growth," he said. "If they're just watching it from the sidelines, they're going to feel left out."
Larry Fink (LinkedIn). "My Remarks as Interim Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum at the 2026 Annual Meeting in Davos."
Economic Policy Institute. "Botched Policy Responses to Globalization Have Decimated Manufacturing Employment."
Gianmarco Ottaviano et al. "The Blacklash of Globalization," Handbook of International Economics, vol. 5 (2022), pp. 405-477.
U.S. Federal Reserve of St. Louis. "Share of Net Worth Held by the Top 1% (99th to 100th Wealth Percentiles)."
U.S. Federal Reserve of St. Louis. "Share of Net Worth Held by the Bottom 50% (1st to 50th Wealth Percentiles)."
arXiv.org "Working with AI: Measuring the Occupational Implications of Generative AI," Page 39.
Nvidia Corp. "‘Largest Infrastructure Buildout in Human History’: Jensen Huang on AI’s ‘Five-Layer Cake’ at Davos."