AI’s Threat to Jobs
Then there’s the other side of AI – the fact that it can be so effective at helping you with your job, it might just do away with you all together. We’re already seeing companies coming forward and stating that they’ve reduced headcount, thanks to AI, and that seems a trend that’s unlikely to stop anytime soon.
Just this week, Amazon has announced that it is cutting 14,000 corporate jobs. In the note to staff about this move, you’ll find a familiar term – ‘AI’. Beth Galetti, Senior Vice President of People Experience and Technology at Amazon credits the technology with enabling the company to operate more leanly, which is likely to be of little comfort to the 14,000 employees currently brushing up their resumes.
This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the Internet, and it’s enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before (in existing market segments and altogether new ones). We’re convinced that we need to be organized more leanly, with fewer layers and more ownership, to move as quickly as possible for our customers and business. – Beth Galetti, Senior Vice President of People Experience and Technology
Eric Yuan’s comments this week illustrate the real unknown of AI’s future impact on the workplace, the seeds of which are being sewn now. His views certainly seem the best case scenario, but when they come at the same time as swathes of job losses due to AI advancement, it’s hard to know which outcome to bet on.
Regardless, it’s hard to argue that one way or the other, AI will certainly have a long term impact on how we do our jobs from here on.
