Artificial intelligence has already set off alarm bells with its potential takeover of jobs, but it’s already causing disturbances in the tech industry.
Many tech companies have cited AI as the reason behind the huge layoffs as companies are recently reconsidering new hires. CNN informed of.
Chegg, the education technology company, revealed that it is letting go of 80 or 4% of its employees “to better execute the company against its AI strategy and create long-term, sustainable value for its students and investors”.
IBM CEO Arvind Krishna speaking during an interview Bloombergsaid the company may stop hiring for roles that AI could replace in the coming years.
However, he later stated that “AI is going to create far more jobs than it takes away”.
File-storage service Dropbox in April said it was cutting 16% of its workforce, citing AI as the reason.
Recently, Challenger, Gray & Christmas – an outplacement firm – laid off 3,900 people due to AI in the tech sector.
In a note to its employees regarding the job cuts, Dropbox CEO Drew Houston said: “Over the past few months, AI has captured the world’s collective imagination, highlighting the potential for our next generation of AI-powered products. The market is expanding rapidly. Any of us could have guessed.
“Our next phase of growth requires a different mix of skill sets, particularly in AI and early stage product development.”
However, Professor Dan Wang of Columbia Business School pointed out CNN that “AI will lead to a restructuring of organizations”, however, he does not see them as replacing humans.
“As far as I see, AI does not necessarily replace humans, but rather augments the work of humans,” Wang said. “I think the kind of competition we should all be thinking more about is human experts being replaced by human experts who can take advantage of AI tools.”
The tech industry is set to lay off 212,294 workers in 2023, according to data provided by Layoffs.fyi. However, the industry has also invested heavily in AI talent and technology.
