Goldman's investment banking chief shares how she uses AI most — and how juniors should use it to get ahead

Even the highest echelons of Goldman Sachs’ investment bank are having to re-learn the art of the client meeting.

Kim Posnett, the firm’s co-head of investment banking, said AI has transformed the nature of those meetings for the bank and the client, both of whom can now access and understand far more information.

Now, the CEOs, founders, and investors she talks to have higher expectations for good advice. “It raises the bar for having high-impact meetings, because everyone is more educated and more intelligent before the meeting,” she said.

Posnett also uses AI to synthesize intel faster when preparing to meet with clients and, in turn, spends time on higher-order thinking, as she said is true for many senior bankers.

Junior bankers are similarly better prepared to sit in on client meetings, which is accelerating an apprenticeship culture that’s central to the firm’s identity, Posnett said.

The youngest analysts can now spend more time where the true learning lives: listening to complex conversations and watching how senior bankers advise clients through high-stakes choices.

Goldman Sachs spent around $6 billion on technology, and the bank’s CEO, David Solomon, advised this year’s interns to experiment with AI in his annual letter.

As Posnett sees it, young people across industries should take his advice and aim to “learn faster, to prepare better, and to spend more time on higher-value work.” For investment banking analysts at Goldman Sachs, she said that often means speeding up the research process, maybe by summarizing earnings calls or analyzing industry trends.

Yet juniors need to find the right balance between mastering AI and depending on it, Posnett said. “Learn how the technology works, experiment with it, use it, and understand how it can make you more productive,” she said. “But my second piece of advice is even more important: invest heavily in the human skills that AI struggles to perfectly replicate, ask better questions, develop judgment, learn how to communicate, build relationships, and earn trust. ” Posnett recently gave Goldman’s incoming analysts and associates five pieces of advice on using AI: master the technical essentials of investment banking, learn to ask better questions, use the time that AI creates wisely, lean into apprenticeship acceleration, and focus on distinctly human qualities that matter in business.

Though AI can replace many of the tedious tasks that have historically defined the early years of investment banking — making slide decks and building models, for example — Posnett said it’s still important to understand the basics of the job. “There’s no substitute for developing technical expertise and judgment, a deep understanding of markets, clients, and businesses,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if the AI gives you answers if you don’t understand what it’s saying.

You can only build those capabilities through experience and repetition.”