ANZ chief executive Nuno Matos was asked about the threat to humanity after a US scientist warned there was a greater than 10 per cent chance AI "could kill all humans" within the next decade.
The warning by Anthropic's Evan Hubinger was amplified by former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon, ahead of three of the biggest names in the sector coming out with their own concerns.
Anthropic boss Dario Amodei, OpenAI boss Sam Altman and Elon Musk on Sunday called for a major development slow-down, including independent monitoring of AI models and global regulation.
"Musk, Amodei and Sam saying that they think they have to cool down the pace, it should tell us something very clear," Mr Matos told the Australian Financial Review's Asia summit in Sydney on Tuesday.
"They are thinking that the risk of this technology is well above what they expected."
The summit discussed the shifting economic influence from American to Asian markets amid the US-China race to dominate AI technology, shaping economic futures and geopolitical power.
AI adoption is being led by the United States, where about 30 per cent of firms have a paid subscription to market leaders OpenAI or Anthropic to use ChatGPT or Claude.
Countries such as Japan, China and India are slightly behind because their economies have more manual labour or blue-collar type work, which means adoption is a little harder.
"AI is a reality. No more debate," Mr Matos said.
"Three or four years ago, there was still a debate about if this is real or not. It's real."
While the full impact on jobs is not overly clear, those who don't adopt AI technologies will lose their job to someone who does, he said.
"Is it possible that we are all going to lose our jobs? It is possible".
Asked if the around 9000 ANZ employees in India will be disrupted by AI, Mr Matos said, "Nobody knows".
"Human beings are not made to stay at home. That's not a way of living," he said of the impact of job losses.
His appearance was disrupted by a protester who rushed the stage and began yelling that the ANZ banking boss was profiting off destroying the planet.
Security tackled the intruder standing next to an unfazed Mr Matos.
"No worries. It's part of the job," he told the audience.
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