Some of Wall Street’s major banks are asking the same question, as they test A.I. tools that can largely replace their armies of analysts by performing in seconds the work that now takes hours, or a whole weekend.

The software, being deployed inside banks under code names such as “Socrates,” is likely not only to change the arc of a Wall Street career, but also to essentially nullify the need to hire thousands of new college graduates.

Gregory Larkin, another former banking analyst, said the new technology would start “a civil war” inside Wall Street’s biggest firms by tilting the balance of power to technologists who program A.I. tools, as opposed to the bankers who use them — to say nothing of technology giants like Microsoft and Google, which license much of the A.I. technology to banks for hefty fees.