IBM’s CEO stated that advancements in artificial intelligence may result in a nearly third reduction in the back office employees at the IT giant. In an interview with Bloomberg, Arvind Krishna said that his company may cease hiring for such roles and lay off 7,800 employees over a number of years. Only a small portion of IBM’s 260,000 employees are employed in the back office, and the company has kept some positions filled even after recently letting go of about 5,000 workers in other divisions, according to a Bloomberg report.
In a statement to AFP on Tuesday, an IBM representative highlighted that “there is no general hiring ‘pause’ in place” at the Armonk, New York-based company.
Thanks to the advancement of generative AI, it is now possible to complete less difficult tasks more quickly, such as some human resource tasks, data administration, and other repetitive activities, as demonstrated by well-known apps like ChatGPT. In the US and Europe, one-fourth of the positions now held by workers might be automated, and AI-driven automation could result in the loss of up to 300 million jobs, according to a March analysis by Goldman Sachs.
Despite the fact that ChatGPT, a technology developed by Microsoft-backed OpenAI, shocked the globe when it was released late last year, companies are now only using it for straightforward tasks because of its error-proneness.
