The impact that artificial intelligence tools will have on the labor market is still uncertain, but Arvind Krishna, IBM’s president, already has a very clear idea, at least, of how it will affect his company. In the next five years, he believes that artificial intelligence will kill some 7,800 jobs.
It is the estimate that this week he made in an interview with the Bloomberg newspaper. The company has some 26,000 workers dedicated to administrative tasks, which is the area in which Krishna believes that the impact of AI tools will be greatest. “30% of these jobs will be replaced in the next 5 years by artificial intelligence,” he confessed.
For now, the company has stopped hiring departments in this area, such as human resources or accounting. The executive clarified that for now the transition plan consists of not replacing the positions that become vacant.
IBM is also being much more selective in hiring new staff in other departments. Like many other tech companies, it has announced layoffs in recent months. In January, the company confirmed that 3,800 employees will be affected by the cuts due to the difficult economic situation.
The historic company thus becomes one of the first to speak openly about how new artificial intelligence tools, such as ChatGPT, are going to affect the employment landscape, even in technology companies and positions that have traditionally been considered safe, such as engineering. and development.
The rest of the technology companies have tried not to talk directly about replacing jobs with artificial intelligence during the recent layoffs, but it is no secret that it is part of the equation that practically all of them are considering.
25% of companies on the S list
The change in strategy of many of them to focus on artificial intelligence could also have a significant labor cost. Dropbox announced this week that it will lay off about 100 employees, 16% of its workforce, to create new teams focused on artificial intelligence tools.
“In an ideal world, we would simply move workers from one team to another. We have done this whenever we can. However, our next stage of growth requires a different mix of skills, particularly in AI,” said Drew Houston, president of the company.
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