--- title: "A CEO of a Bank Just Said Something So Ghoulish About Its Plans for AI That He’s Now in Full Damage Control Mode" description: "Standard Chartered CEO Bill Winters scrambled to defend his earlier remarks about replacing human workers with AI." date: "2026-05-21" modified: "2026-05-21" authors: - name: "Frank Landymore" job_title: "Contributing Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/flandymore" url: "https://futurism.com/future-society/bank-ceo-ai-damage-control" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "Future Society" - "The Industrialists" --- # A CEO of a Bank Just Said Something So Ghoulish About Its Plans for AI That He’s Now in Full Damage Control Mode ![An illustration showing Bill Winters, the CEO of the British multinational bank Standard Chartered.]() AI has emboldened CEOs [to make all kinds of smug declarations]() that betray their contempt for lowly human laborers. But Bill Winters, the CEO of the British multinational bank Standard Chartered, said something so viscerally off-putting that he's now gone into full damage control mode to get the heat off his back. On Wednesday, he wrote an internal memo to employees attempting to explain away his remark that he would be firing thousands of workers and replacing the company's "lower-value human capital" with AI. Yes, you heard that right: "lower-value human capital." And it clearly didn't go over well. "Many of you will have seen media coverage following the investor event in Hong Kong, particularly the reporting around automation, AI, and workforce changes," Winters said in the memo, [per *The Wall Street Journal*](). "I know this may be unsettling when reduced to simple headlines or a quote out of context." "Where roles do fall away, it reflects changes in the work, not the value of our people," he added, unconvincingly. The ghoulish remarks came on Tuesday as Winters was in Hong Kong giving a presentation about the London-based bank's new financial targets. Chief among them was a plan to cull about 15 percent of its workforce by 2030, or about 8,000 jobs. "It's not cost cutting," Winters said. "It's replacing in some cases lower-value human capital with the financial capital and the investment capital we're putting in." Unfortunately for Winters, he would be receiving no kudos for inventing what is perhaps the most strained and misanthropic euphemism — or dysphemism , perhaps — for describing an employee in (lower-value) human (capital) history. Instead, he was met with [a storm of outrage online]() from the very masses he had dismissed as worthless. "What stage of capitalism is this?" one user dryly [asked](). The *Financial Times*'s Alphaville blog mocked Winters' remarks by [selling "lower-value human capital]()" merch to "celebrate your looming obsolescence." Even the former president of Singapore weighed in. "It's disturbing to read workers described as 'lower-value human capital'," Halimah Yacob wrote in a Facebook post, as spotted by the *WSJ*. **More on AI:** [*New Data Suggests That AI Really Is Already Replacing Human Jobs*]() ## Author At Futurism, my work has often centered on bringing a sense of clarity and insight to complex topics ranging from the regulation of emerging technologies to the esoteric ideologies of Silicon Valley executives, while striving not to lose the poetic sense of awe inspired by often-obscure fields like astrophysics and quantum computing. I broke the story of CNET using AI to produce articles that turned out to be riddled with factual errors and plagiarism — a dam-breaking inflection point, as I've reported, that's inspired copycats and endless discourse while beguiling stakeholders ranging from tech giants to purveyors of spam around the web. My work at Futurism has been cited by publications including CBS News, the Los Angeles Times, Vice, Gizmodo, Engadget, the Verge, and Vanity Fair. I grew up in locales ranging from India to China, and now live in the exotic suburbs of Virginia. In my free time, I'm an avid reader of weird sci-fi literature, an aficionado of East Asian cinema, and, regrettably, a relapsed gamer. Allegedly, I’m working on a debut novel, currently untitled. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()