AI boom risks widening wealth divide, says BlackRock's Larry Fink

Summary

The boom in artificial intelligence risks widening inequality, with only a handful of companies and investors likely to reap its financial rewards, the BlackRock chief executive, Larry Fink, has said.The boss of the $14tn (£10.4tn) asset manager used his annual letter to investors on Monday to highlight potential hazards around the exponential growth in AI, which has attracted rapid investment and become, he said, “central to strategic competition” between global powers such as the US and China.“The massive wealth created over the past several generations flowed mostly to people who already owned financial assets,” Fink said. “And now AI threatens to repeat that pattern at an even larger scale.”He warned that the AI boom risked accelerating a trend where leading companies pulled ahead while others struggled to keep pace.AI-focused tech stocks have made significant gains in recent years – the market leader, the chipmaker Nvidia, is now valued at $4.3ttn.Fink said companies with the data, infrastructure and funding to deploy AI on a large scale “are positioned to benefit disproportionately”. That could end up exacerbating a gulf between the rich and the poor, he said.Larry Fink says companies with the data, infrastructure and funding to deploy AI on a large scale ‘are positioned to benefit disproportionately’. Photograph: Kylie Cooper/Reuters“History suggests that transformative technologies create enormous value – and much of that value accrues to the companies that build and deploy them, and to the investors who own them,” Fink said.“That is not unusual, and none of this is inherently problematic,” he added, noting that the winds had often shifted with technological change.However, “the broader question is who participates in the gains,” Fink warned. “When market capitalisation rises but ownership remains narrow, prosperity can feel increasingly distant to those on the outside.”Fink’s comments come weeks before BlackRock is expected to disclose his pay for 2025. He ...