Norway’s huge $2.1 trillion sovereign wealth fund, the world’s largest, plans to eventually allow artificial intelligence to make some investment decisions, but only under human supervision. Officials confirmed this remains a future step, citing the technology’s current error rate.
Around half of the 700 employees at Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) already code their own AI tools, primarily using Anthropic’s Claude large language model. These systems gather information, assisting staff in decision-making, according to Stian Kirkeberg, the fund’s head of machine learning and AI.
Applications range from monitoring 7,000 companies for environmental, social, and governance (ESG) and financial risk, to simulating contract negotiations or preparing for meetings. Mr Kirkeberg stated that, in time, some AI agents will be permitted to make limited autonomous decisions.
“The principle is that we make better human decisions by getting AI to analyse it for us,” he told Reuters after the seminar.
“At some stage, we’re going to trust that the agent can make some of the decisions and we just monitor what it does,” Kirkeberg said.
He added that the fund was moving toward that approach but was not applying it yet, emphasising that human oversight would remain essential.
Chief Executive Nicolai Tangen has been a vocal supporter of using AI both internally and in the companies the fund invests in, once describing firms that fail to adopt the technology as “complete morons”.
He said the wealth fund, which manages Norway’s oil and gas revenues for future generations, is not under the same pressure as short-term investors to automate investment decisions.
“You have investment firms which have automated investment decisions … We’re not doing that. But we are also not a high-frequency trader, … we are a long-term investor, so it’s a bit different”, Tangen told Reuters.
One exception is the fund’s use of AI to analyse when to trade or not, helping to reduce transaction costs.
Tangen said the fund had invested “millions of crowns” in AI and returned benefits “in the billions”, without giving specific figures or a timeframe.
He expected the headcount to remain steady at around 700 across its offices in Oslo, London, New York and Singapore, but roles would shift as a result of AI toward front-end investment from back-end administration.
His advice to other company leaders pushing for AI adoption in-house is to avoid setting explicit job cut targets.
“Because then you will just create a lot of resistance. I think instead what you have as a target to increase sales, profits, efficiency, just to gain market share and do what you do better. I think that’s a much more constructive way of implementing it”, Tangen said.
