IBM says it will pause hiring as CEO says around 7,800 non-customer facing roles could be replaced
Computing giant IBM has said it plans to pause hiring for roles that could be replaced with artificial intelligence in the next five years.
CEO Arvind Krishna said that up to 30% of non-customer-facing roles – tallying a figure of roughly 7,800 jobs – could be replaced by AI and automation in the near future.
These ‘back-office functions’, which include human resources, amount to a total of roughly 26,000 workers within the company, Krishna added.
From January to March, companies announced 270,416 job cuts – with the technology sector accounting for more than a third of the cuts in the first quarter at 102,391 layoffs, including cuts at Amazon and Google parent company, Alphabet – a 396 percent increase from the same period last year, according to a report on April 4 from outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
Tasks which can be replaced involve providing employment verification letters or moving employees between departments.
Computing giant, International Business Machines Corp (IBM) has said it plans to pause hiring for roles that could be replaced with artificial intelligence in the next five years
Arvind Krishna, CEO of IBM, said that up to 30% of non-customer-facing roles – tallying a figure of roughly 7,800 jobs – could be replaced by AI and automation in the near future
Other HR functions, however, such as evaluating workforce composition and productivity, won’t be replaced within the decade, he explained.
IBM’s plan is one of the most drastic workforce strategies announced in response to rapidly advancing automation technology.
Job advice platform Resumebuilder.com surveyed 1,000 business leaders who either use or plan to use Microsoft AI breakthrough, ChatGPT.
It found that about half of their companies have implemented chatbots. And nearly half of this group say that ‘ChatGPT has already converted employees at their companies’.
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