The most inspiring CEO stories come from workers who rose from entry-level positions at their firms to the top. What happens when AI takes those jobs away?
I don’t know how to reconcile all these studies saying that AI productivity gains have not materialized and that AI agents are atill uncapable of even the simplest of office tasks with the very measurable loss of jobs.
And I see this same dissonance at my job. Revenue going up, hiring going down, layoffs every quarter and a big push for everyone to use AI. But at the same time basically no real success story from all this increased AI usage.
Probably just me, but I just don’t get it.
Revenue going up, hiring going down, layoffs every quarter and a big push for everyone to use AI. But at the same time basically no real success story from all this increased AI usage. Probably just me, but I just don’t get it.
No, you’ve got it: Revenue increases, short term, when personnel costs are cut, through layoffs and hiring freezes.
The story told (“workers must return to the office to sit on teleconference all day” prompting more of them to quit, or “your job can be done by robots”, or whatever) only needs to make enough sense that the stock holders are satisfied the executives have a sane explanation for sudden loss of workers. Otherwise it might look like the executives are panicking!
Big organizations can continue to function with just a fraction of their workforce. But if they start to realize they are falling behind because of this strategy, they will probably stop it. The first has happened in many cases but not the second yet.
I don’t know how to reconcile all these studies saying that AI productivity gains have not materialized and that AI agents are atill uncapable of even the simplest of office tasks with the very measurable loss of jobs.
And I see this same dissonance at my job. Revenue going up, hiring going down, layoffs every quarter and a big push for everyone to use AI. But at the same time basically no real success story from all this increased AI usage. Probably just me, but I just don’t get it.
No, you’ve got it: Revenue increases, short term, when personnel costs are cut, through layoffs and hiring freezes.
The story told (“workers must return to the office to sit on teleconference all day” prompting more of them to quit, or “your job can be done by robots”, or whatever) only needs to make enough sense that the stock holders are satisfied the executives have a sane explanation for sudden loss of workers. Otherwise it might look like the executives are panicking!
Big organizations can continue to function with just a fraction of their workforce. But if they start to realize they are falling behind because of this strategy, they will probably stop it. The first has happened in many cases but not the second yet.