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As technology advances, CEOs are looking closely at its potential impact on the job market. With new AI software gaining traction, many leaders are expecting its use to lead to the elimination of more roles than can be counted.
On Monday, tech giant IBM announced that it was going to pause hiring for jobs deemed to be easily replaced by AI, leaving 7,800 workers in a precarious position. This news comes almost in tandem with the arrival of ChatGPT, a chatbot powered by a generative AI algorithm, which has triggered a flurry of investor excitement.
Though some leaders, such as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, have been optimistic that AI will eventually create more jobs than it eliminates, Morgan Stanley research suggests it may have the opposite effect. In the meantime, tech layoffs have already been taking place as companies look to restructure in times of economic hardship, with those affected potentially never returning to those same jobs.
But what are some of the most visible firms investing in AI right now? IBM appears to have taken the boldest step so far, choosing to centre its plans on replacing workers with AI. Amazon has followed a similar path, with their CFO Brian Olsavsky saying that they are increasing investment in large language models and generative AI, while dropping spending elsewhere. Dropbox is another, with CEO Drew Houston explaining that employees are being made redundant in light of the AI era, and explaining the potential of the technology. The same is true at Meta and Microsoft, the latter using OpenAI’s language model for its customer relationship app, with great success.
Those companies’ CEOs, Arvind Krishna of IBM, Brian Olsavsky from Amazon, Drew Houston from Dropbox, Mark Zuckerberg from Meta, and Satya Nadella of Microsoft, are at the vanguard of technological change, making decisions on the futures of their respective companies – and inevitably, their staff. While they have all approached this change differently, they have been unified in their pleas for businesses to be leaner, more cost-efficient and more easily adapted to future markets – a process which it appears AI can help refine.
In a time of unprecedented change, these leaders have chosen to invest in AI to navigate these difficult times, aware that if successful, the technology could be integral to their operations in the coming years. There is no doubting their foresight and ambition in this regard, but they must also remember that behind their choices are individuals; many of whom, depending on the success of such plans, could lose their jobs.
