BlackRock Chairman and CEO Larry Fink tells CNBC that his ultimate goal is to build artificial intelligence that can "ultimately invest better than humans." Blackrock has already laid off 40 investment professionals in an effort to lower fees by relying more on technological approaches to investing ike data mining. Purely AI-driven investing, however, "is more of a myth than a reality," at the moment.

Lower fees: Investors are beginning to realize that human stock pickers generally underperform the broader market, and that one can capture higher returns on average, at a lower cost, by investing in index funds or by relying on advice provided by algorithms.

Why it matters: Artificial intelligence is not just threatening investment advisement employment. Other white collar jobs like legal discovery work and financial and sports reporting have already begun to be done by robots, as well, and the list grows longer as the technology becomes more advanced.