The CEO of IBM stated that he intends to reduce the computer giant’s back office headcount by approximately one-third due to developments in artificial intelligence.
In an interview with Bloomberg on Monday, Arvind Krishna stated that his company would suspend hiring in such positions and potentially lower the payroll by 7,800 people over the next several years.
“These non-customer-facing roles amount to roughly 26,000 workers,” Krishna said. “I could easily see 30 percent of that getting replaced by AI and automation over a five-year period.”
Back office staff make up only a small portion of IBM’s about 260,000 employees, and the corporation has continued to hire in certain roles while recently laying off about 5,000 people in other areas, according to the Bloomberg article.
An IBM official told AFP on Tuesday that “there is no blanket hiring ‘pause’ in place” at the Armonk, New York-based corporation.
“We’re being very selective when filling jobs that don’t directly touch our clients or technology,” the IBM spokesman added.
The advancement of generative AI, as evidenced by viral applications such as ChatGPT, allows for the easier execution of less difficult jobs such as certain human resource activities, data administration, and other repetitive procedures.
According to a March report by Goldman Sachs, AI-powered automation could cost up to 300 million jobs, and one-fourth of existing labor tasks in the United States and Europe might be mechanized.
However, while the release of ChatGPT took the world by storm late last year, the technology, developed by Microsoft-backed OpenAI, is prone to errors, leading companies to entrust it with simple tasks for the time being.
On Monday, Geoffrey Hinton, known as the “Godfather of AI,” announced his departure from Google’s industry-leading AI research team and blasted Microsoft for pushing too hastily to make ChatGPT-style technology available.
Hinton stated that rivalry among corporate behemoths was causing corporations to deploy new AI technologies at dangerously fast rates, jeopardizing jobs and posing a risk to society.
