A combinatory approach to understanding the relationship between artificial intelligence and financial labour markets

This paper provides a critical conceptualization of the relationship between artificial intelligence and financial labour markets in the United States. In doing so, we ask first, what are the characteristics of ‘actually existing AI’ in the financial sector? Second, what are the various ways in which the relationship between AI and its effects on financial labour or employment over approximately the last decade are approached theoretically, conceptually, or methodologically? Third, what are the (spatial) consequences of AI for financial labour markets in the United States? In responding to these questions, we develop a combinatory approach that integrates a ‘financial ecologies’ approach and a ‘platform financial ecologies approach’ or stated differently, a combination of socio-institutional embeddedness and sociotechnical assemblages. Within this conceptualization, we argue for the possible integration of quantitative and qualitative studies to understand the obstacles to implementing AI as well as their effects in terms of substitution and complementarity. Using the insights from the quantitative and heterodox literatures, we suggest tentatively that thus far, AI has had little centrifugal effect on the geography of the financial sector. The paper concludes with some suggestions for especially financial geographers and other heterodox scholars who seek to analyse this relationship.