Goldman Sachs partner Chris Churchman, who leads the firm's institutional client digital platform Marquee, cautioned that overreliance on artificial intelligence in trading and banking risks causing cognitive decline or reasoning atrophy among the next generation of bankers and traders [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7].
Churchman compared the effect of AI on reasoning skills to how modern inventions have diminished people’s ability to navigate or memorize, saying, "There's a huge danger here that in the era of AI, we outsource our reasoning to these models, and we have cognitive atrophy that stops us being able to reason from first principles ourselves" [1].
He warned that AI’s takeover of routine tasks traditionally used to train junior bankers and traders threatens to erode Wall Street’s apprenticeship culture, which develops practical skills and tacit knowledge [1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7]. Churchman noted that junior traders typically learn by handling client pricing requests under senior supervision, but automating these tasks risks losing the ability to cultivate fully competent senior traders. "我們絕對可以把這項流程自動化，但如此一來，我們還能培養出具備全面理解能力的資深交易員嗎？" he asked [2].
The shift toward AI could reduce the need for junior bankers, as firms explore lowering the ratio of junior to senior employees, a trend reported last year across Wall Street [1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7]. Churchman emphasized the need to balance AI adoption with preserving hands-on experience, stating, "系統的設計必須確保員工在攸關重大利益、高不確定性的決策中仍掌握主導權，而不是淪為被動的操作者" [6].
Chris Churchman joined Goldman Sachs in 2021 after leading currency trading at UBS [1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7]. Goldman Sachs is still determining how best to manage the AI transformation. Their Marquee AI platform remains for internal use only [5, 7].
Churchman publicly voiced his concerns on the Goldman Sachs podcast "Exchanges" on August 24, 2025, drawing media coverage from CNBC and others the following day [1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7].
