'Superintelligence' may never arrive, Deutsche Bank says. What that could mean for the U.S. economy.

By Nora Redmond

'We all collectively lack the imagination to wonder what the jobs of the future will be,' Deutsche Bank's Jim Reid says

Deutsche Bank's Jim Reid said he sees productivity gains from artificial-intelligence adoption as having the potential to create new jobs.

"Superintelligence" probably won't ever be achieved, Deutsche Bank says, but the U.S. economy could still stand to gain from an increase in artificial-intelligence productivity.

The multinational investment bank defines "superintelligence" - coincidentally a term President Donald Trump last month mandated that the U.S. federal government use instead of "artificial intelligence" - as the continuum beyond artificial general intelligence. AGI matches or exceeds human abilities across a specific cognitive task, according to the bank, whereas superintelligence would surpass human performance across every intellectual domain.

Key to reaching that point is recursive self-improvement, or RSI, by which an AI tool is able to continuously and autonomously design and improve itself, wrote Adrian Cox, thematic strategist at Deutsche Bank's research unit, and Azeem Azhar, founder of research group Exponential View, in a recent report.

Deutsche Bank's base case is that due to fundamental limitations on the speed AI programs and systems can achieve, we won't reach superintelligence. There is already some evidence to suggest an increase in productivity, Cox and Azhar wrote, but for now, the high investment into AI's build-out is weighing down productivity.

The researchers also wrote that a boost in spending among AI hyperscalers is driving earnings at semiconductor companies and others connected to the trade, which currently accounts for between one-third and one-half of U.S. growth.

"The wealth effect of rising stock prices, with the ratio of U.S. equity wealth to income rising from around 1.8 to almost 2.5 over the past three years, is supporting consumer spending," they wrote.

Jim Reid, global head of macroeconomic and thematic research at Deutsche Bank, spoke at an event at the bank's office in London on Tuesday. "I suppose when I look through 250, 300 years since the Industrial Revolution, for every new technology, we've heard the same story of this being negative for jobs," Reid said. "What we tend to find is that the productivity gains from all these technologies tend to raise enough money that there is demand for jobs - just different jobs and different things."

He referred to the decision by Henry Ford, the founder of Ford Motor Co. (F), in 1913 to automate part of the production of the Model T car, which resulted in intense backlash. But in doing so, Reid said, Ford was able to make cars cheaper. More people could afford them, and more jobs were created as more workers were needed to help manufacture batteries.

"We all collectively lack the imagination to wonder what the jobs of the future will be," Reid said. "But I can't help thinking, if you have that productivity, we will adjust and we will find jobs."

-Nora Redmond

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10-13-26 1221ET