Head of $52 billion bank blames “low-quality human capital.”

The head of a $52 billion investment bank called a plan to cut 8,000 jobs over the next four years a reduction in “low-value human capital.”

Bill Winters, chief executive of Standard Chartered, told reporters this week that there will be “job cuts in favor of machines, and this will accelerate as we move further into AI (artificial intelligence).”

“It’s not a cost cutting,” Winters said.

“In some cases it replaces lower value human capital with the financial capital and investment capital that we invest.”

The comments are the latest public admission by a major financial or technology institution on the rapid path toward greater AI integration in the workplace.

And Australia is not immune – thousands of local jobs have already been either replaced or put on the chopping block this year.

But it is the reference to workers as “people of lesser value…”