International Business Machine Corp. (IBM) is reportedly freezing its hiring processes and may replace almost 8,000 workers with artificial intelligence (AI) software, according to a Bloomberg interview with IBM CEO Arvind Krishna.
Krishna told Bloomberg News on Monday the corporate giant is expecting to pause hiring for certain jobs at some point in the next few years after discovering the undisclosed roles could be replaced by AI, Bloomberg reported. The hiring process for back-office roles, such as human resources and others, will be suspended or at least slowed, the CEO allegedly said.
“I could easily see 30% of that getting replaced by AI and automation over a five-year period,” he told the outlet, which would reportedly amount to roughly 7,800 non-customer-facing employees being released from their positions.
Daily Caller’s Kay Smythe Says Society Will Be ‘Useless’ If AI Robots Take Over Journalism | @DailyCaller
@JohnFBachman @NEWSMAX 🤘🏽🇺🇸 https://t.co/n66Ldi2wII
— KAY SMYTHE (@KaySmythe) January 31, 2023
In late 2022 it became apparent journalists and potentially a slew of other corporate and everyday roles could be replaced with AI in the coming years. Less than six months later, the CEO of one of the biggest tech corporations in the world is reportedly indicating almost 8,000 people will be panicking and jobless in an increasingly costly society.
AI has the potential to automate a huge number of roles once designated for writers, programmers, technicians and so many more once-dependable and relatively well-paid positions (except for writers, duh). More than 70,000 people graduated with various types of computer science undergrad degrees in 2018, likely with enormous amounts of debt, according to Medium.
These individuals, and probably thousands more, once lived in a world where they could easily get a high five-figure to low six-figure salary straight out of college, but now their entire degrees might be made redundant by the end of 2023. (RELATED: Dear Kay: I Just Lost My Tech Job … To A Robot. Help!)
The short- and long-term, micro and macro impacts of this potential are likely exponentially bad, and may impact everything from the jobs and housing market to the entire economy. The only way to avoid this conclusion seems to be begging companies to spend their money on keeping redundant jobs. And I don’t think anyone sees that actually happening.