Artificial intelligence is responsible for far more layoffs than companies admit

United Parcel Service Inc. recently laid off the largest number of employees in its 116-year history. According to CEO Carol Toma, this was made possible by new technologies, including artificial intelligence. She cited just one example where machine learning allows salespeople to prepare proposals without needing guidance from pricing experts.

UPS is among a growing number of companies that are looking at AI from two different angles: on the one hand, they are showing investors how AI allows them to do more with less, while at the same time avoiding scaring people away from direct integration of technology and layoffs. A UPS public relations representative said that AI is not replacing employees and that management did not confirm an explicit link between artificial intelligence and layoffs during the results presentation to investors.

BlackRock Inc. last month is the same heralded a wave of layoffs, namely 600 jobs are said to be at stake. CEO Larry Fink and President Rob Kapito told employees that dramatic changes are occurring in the industry, and perhaps the biggest is how new technologies are affecting all industries.

Experts cannot come up with an exact estimate of how many jobs have been lost due to the rapid development of artificial intelligence. According to the data Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. should have laid off companies in the USA since last May 4600 ljudi, da bi s tem sprostila vire za zaposlovanje kadrov z UI izkušnjami ali ker je tehnologija nadomestila opravljanje nalog. Je pa višji podpredsednik Andrew Challenger še dodal, da je ta ocena “zagotovo podcenjena” in da je realna številka še veliko večja.

“Po vsej verjetnosti je v gospodarstvu več delovnih mest, ki jih UI izpodriva, kot pa tistih, ki jih ustvarja. Vsakič, ko podjetje omeni karkoli v zvezi s tem področjem, se pojavi v medijih. Zato se podjetja ne želijo izpostavljati”, pravi Challenger.

Last spring, International Business Machines Corp. was all over the headlines when their CEO Arvind Krishna told Bloomberg that plan to stop hiring, because, in his opinion, certain jobs are soon to be replaced by UI. An IBM public relations representative said the company has no plans to freeze hiring and plans to maintain headcount.

Johnny Taylor, CEO Society for Human Resource Management, je izjavila, da misli, da se bodo številni takšni “rezi” izvedli potiho. “IBM je bil prvi, ki je s takšno napovedjo šel v javnost in to ga je kar precej stalo”, je dejal Taylor v intervjuju decembra. “Ostali so potem rekli ‘Ne bomo naznanili, mi bomo samo naredili.’ Zmanjšali bomo število zaposlenih."

Številna podjetja bi lahko storila točno to, in sicer z znatnim upočasnjevanjem zaposlovanja, je še dodal. “When we wake up in three years, we will see much leaner organizations. They will simply replace you without much announcement“, pravi Taylor.

The biggest hit to tech jobs

Apart from IBM, only a handful of companies have explicitly confirmed the connection between the introduction of artificial intelligence and layoffs. freezing of employment.

Decembra lani je švedsko podjetje Klarna Inc. napovedalo ravno to, saj naj bi orodja, kot je OpenAI-jev ChatGPT, skrajšala čas za določena opravila. Za Telegraph je izvršni direktor Sebastian Siemiatkowski povedal, da potrebujejo manj ljudi za isto količino dela. “Za nas je trenutno najbolj primerno, da povemo, da trenutno ne zaposlujemo in čakamo, kako se bodo stvari odvijale”, je said Klarna's public relations representative.

Janurja se je tako ena najbolj priljubljenih aplikacij za učenje jezikov Duolingo Inc. odločila, da približno 10 % kontraktorjem ne podaljšajo pogodbe. “We simply no longer need as many people to do the work that the contractors were doing. In part, this can be attributed to artificial intelligence“, je predstavnik Duolinga povedal za Bloomberg. Poleg tega pa je izpostavil še, da Duolingo še vedno zaposluje za različne vloge. Iz podjetja so sporočili še, da nobeden od redno polno zaposlenih ljudi ni bil odpuščen in da to ni direktna menjava zaposlenih z umetno inteligenco, ki jo mnogi redno uporabljajo za svoje delo.

All these companies that we have highlighted so far are not the only ones that think alike, although most of them do not say it out loud. Three out of four Fortune 500 companies that participated in a Gallup survey last year claim that they see how artificial intelligence will begin to replace employees within three years.

“Nehajmo se pretvarjati – delovna mesta bodo na račun umetne inteligence izginjala“, pravi Bob Tahooney, direktor upravljanja s človeškimi viri pri zavarovalnici Allstate Corp.. Dodal je še, da je v svoji izjavi mislil na celoten trg in ne specifično na njihovo podjetje. “Jobs will be lost as well as upgraded“, je zaključil.

For his department, Tahooney offered an example of how artificial intelligence will change the work of HR development teams. As he himself says, the previously three-week content creation process can now be done in an hour or two.

In the technology industry, some of the biggest CEOs have warned that artificial intelligence will eliminate certain jobs. Elon Musk has even predicted that at some point we will get so far that no jobs will be needed anymore.