IBM CEO in Damage Control Mode After AI Job Loss Comments (itpro.com) 51
IBM CEO Arvind Krishna appears to be in a state of damage control following recent controversial comments on AI-related job losses. From a report: Speaking at an event in the US this week, Krishna said IBM has no intention of laying off tech staff, such as developers or programmers, and instead plans to ramp up hiring for roles in these areas. "I don't intend to get rid of a single one," he said. "I'll get more." Krishna added that the company aims to increase the number of software engineering and sales staff over the next four years to accommodate for its heightened focus on generative AI. Instead, the hammer will fall largely on staff working in back-office operations, aligning closely with what we've heard previously from the exec.
Earlier this year, IBM announced plans to cut nearly 8,000 staff working in positions spanning human resources in a bid to automate roles. The move means that anywhere up to 7,800 jobs at the tech giant's HR division could be cut, equivalent to around 30% of the overall workforce in the unit. IBM also said at the time that it would halt hiring for roles in the division on account of positions being automated.
Krishna has been among the most outspoken big tech executives on the topic of AI job losses in recent months. While industry figureheads have repeatedly shirked the topic, Krishna, to his credit, has been candid on the subject. In an interview with CNBC in August, Krishna suggested "we should all feel better" about the influx of generative AI tools, much to the ire of critics worried about its impact on the labor market. Krishna also told the broadcaster that organizations can deliver marked improvements to productivity through generative AI, but that will come at the expense of human roles.
Earlier this year, IBM announced plans to cut nearly 8,000 staff working in positions spanning human resources in a bid to automate roles. The move means that anywhere up to 7,800 jobs at the tech giant's HR division could be cut, equivalent to around 30% of the overall workforce in the unit. IBM also said at the time that it would halt hiring for roles in the division on account of positions being automated.
Krishna has been among the most outspoken big tech executives on the topic of AI job losses in recent months. While industry figureheads have repeatedly shirked the topic, Krishna, to his credit, has been candid on the subject. In an interview with CNBC in August, Krishna suggested "we should all feel better" about the influx of generative AI tools, much to the ire of critics worried about its impact on the labor market. Krishna also told the broadcaster that organizations can deliver marked improvements to productivity through generative AI, but that will come at the expense of human roles.
He's lying (Score:3, Interesting)
There's no such thing as "AI". What we're calling AI are LLMs. It's a new tech to be sure, but it's not self aware.
That said, the buzz around AI automation has every CEO on the planet looking to automate and replace workers.
Did you ever look at a process and think "gee, I wonder why we didn't automate that?".
Well, every CEO is now doing that. 8000 jobs lost inside IBM to that process is probably a low ball number.
Oh, and
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Getting rid of older workers has been a key business strategy since at least the mid-1970s when I entered the job market. It's gotten worse since then.
One big reason is that older workers demand more than younger workers: a history of pay raises, time off for family obligations, and they are set in their ways. Young workers are cheaper, easier to overwork, don't have families to take them away from work time, and are more compliant. The health insurance situation has changed since Obamacare, so not sure how
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The health insurance situation has changed since Obamacare
The ACA still allows for rating by age, the brackets are set in 10 year intervals, so 20-29, 30-39, and so forth, with the ratio capped at 3:1 for adults, meaning, your older employees can potentially have premiums three times higher than younger employees.
It's not likely to be a huge consideration, the rest of what you say is more likely to weigh in, health insurance is stupidly expensive but not compared to a six digit salary for an experienced knowledge economy worker.
I think it's a bigger concern than folks realize (Score:2)
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curious.
are offsite contractors being considered
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It's not even that. It's more that we easily see through the CEO bullshit "visions" because we've seen them all before. The whole shit comes in cycles and we were already here when the last CEO had that spiffy new "vision" the current one has. And selling some bullshit to someone who already knows it's bullshit is a really, really hard sell.
And worse, we inform the rest that the pipe dream is just that, so people keep working instead of wasting time on their "vision". And we can't have that!
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That said, the buzz around AI automation has every CEO on the planet looking to automate and replace workers. Did you ever look at a process and think "gee, I wonder why we didn't automate that?".
Perhaps we need to look at this problem a bit differently, since the question being posed might be more like "gee, I wonder how we can get someone else to pay for our automation?"
Why has every CEO not looked at the billions pissed away by a failing automotive industry drunk on EV? The ramp-up costs of AI alone should have been enough to scare a lot of companies into taking a step back, and yet it seems we're...accelerating. And AI is hardly some environmental mandate.
One main reason Greed acts that carele
Re:He's lying (Score:5, Funny)
We could try to automate the CEO position, that has some really heavy saving possibilities.
Our main problem here is that we didn't find out yet what that guy is doing here in the first place.
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The other 50% is in denial.
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I read somewhere about 50% of CEOs believe their job can be automated.
Excellent! Sounds like at least 50% of CEOs are personally wealthy enough to make that claim.
Let's start with the Fortune 500. At least we'll know they're lying if they try and claim they can't afford to be involuntarily retired.
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Most companies I know or work with are so desperate for staff that much of the ageism is out the window. There is still a fundamental need for junior staff both as a long term strategy and to cover some of the more labor-intensive portions of work, but the only reason older staff (say 50-60) is leaving is because they want to.
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Interesting. I know there were a lot of cuts panned earlier in the year, but now it seems to have shifted. My industry (architecture/engineering/construction) is generally out-of-phase (and amplitude) with tech, but our tech clients seem to have their capital plans in pretty stable condition. Nobody is building or renovating offices with us, but there is still plenty of work to go around and never enough people to do it.
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A misconception. (Score:3)
There's no such thing as "AI". What we're calling AI are LLMs. It's a new tech to be sure, but it's not self aware.
The term "artificial intelligence" showed up in 1955. It's described as "the capability of computer systems or algorithms to imitate intelligent human behavior".
You're requirement of self-awareness goes far beyond even artificial general intelligence which can learn and do the same things as people.
Your internal definition of artificial intelligence is out of sync with the rest of the world.
Re: He's lying (Score:2)
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In defense of IBM, the AI based IT management tools that I've used so far have been terrible. Amazon's "Trusted Advisor" seems to come to mind, which gives bad advice about your AWS configuration that would probably crash your systems if you actually tried to implement it as suggested.
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It doesn't matter if the technology is really "AI." LLMs are a tool, whatever they are called, and they do have the potential to cost people jobs.
He is lying (Score:2)
"I don't intend to get rid of a single one," he said.
He is lying. Plain and simple.
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"I don't intend to get rid of a single one," he said.
He is lying. Plain and simple.
Isn't that out of context. because he was explicitly referring to engineering staff? And what they're cutting is office staff in the HR department, while hiring gobs of new engineers?
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I think he believes what he says. He’s also very aware that his intentions could change tomorrow.
Honestly... "Well, duh" (Score:4, Interesting)
If you're IBM and you have programmers you can augment with AI assistants (which is what 'AI' is currently still not good enough for but might be soon), you do that and try to dominate the market. It's your niche. What AI can outright replace is the clerical staff you have doing repetitive memo-writing. The stuff that isn't "IBM" but is needed to keep the machine oiled and running.
The really amusing thing is that once we have AI assistants writing memos for us, we're going to follow up with AI assistants to read the glut of AI-created memos, filter out the noise, and reduce the remainder to bullet lists we can actually keep up with. One system creating unnecessary garbage, and another disposing of it while picking out the occasional 'gem' for us.
I already get more human-created email in a day than I can process while still performing my primary tasks... which is why my mailbox has a couple of dozen rules for sorting and archiving it all without bothering me. I keep it, of course, because occasionally someone will ask me about something and then I can find the note they're talking about. I imagine the company I work for will need fewer HR and PR people to fill my inbox with unnecessary crap in the not-to-distant future.
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The point is that we do a lot of almost 'busy-work' that is just barely necessary that, until now, could not be replaced by automation.
That minimum threshold has now been crossed. 'AI' doesn't need to be actually intelligent to write a slight variation of a memo that's been written billions of times before and almost nobody actually reads... and nobody cares about typos or grammatical errors.
The computer programs are coming for the bottom end clerical work, and just as the computer killed the killed a lot
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You don't have to buy it, it exists whether you buy it or not.
I deal with people all the time who write 'professional' email I find embarrassingly inept, yet they remain employed. AI will just make slightly different mistakes when composing messages.
Re: Honestly... "Well, duh" (Score:3)
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Future of HR and other type jobs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Wouldn't AI replace programmers (Score:2)
Yeah, I can't fire the senior architects but I don't have a lot of those guys.
... increase the number of software engineering .. (Score:3)
"Welcome onboard!
You can totally trust your job security with us!
What you will be working on is making even more staff redundant, but don't worry, we'll always need you!
Honest we will!"
Anyone who joins a huge corporate busy laying off 8000 of its staff needs their head examined, or to be incredibly desperate for money.
Seems palpably obvious that the new software engineering hires will be busy working on making more staff redundant, eventually including themselves.
Then again, it's IBM right? So it looks good on the CV ...
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Don't worry just 'cause you write a tool that basically replaces you. We just want to sell that to our customers, not use it ourselves.
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HR Head Count (Score:5, Insightful)
Numbers in the summary imply that IBM has 24,000 people in HR. A quick Google shows an overall headcount of ~290k.
There's one person in IBM's HR department for every 11 non-HR employees. What on earth is going on over there that it requires 3-4hrs of HR time per week to employ a member of staff? Not terribly surprised they're being downsized.
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Well there is the old joke that IBM is a legal company that also happens to sell computers. They have entire buildings dedicated to the legal department.
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IBM isn't a tech company (Score:2)
No surprise there (Score:3)
In an interview with CNBC in August, Krishna suggested "we should all feel better" about the influx of generative AI tools
Well Krishna is the divinity of compassion, tenderness and love after all...
Replace the C-suite instead (Score:2)
The jobs of the people occupying the C-suite, including the CEO are ripe to be replaced by AI.
Save hundreds of millions every year by shitcanning this lot instead of the rank and file workers !
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AI?
A halfway decent magic-8-ball can do that job, with about the same accuracy.
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Horseless Carriage (Score:1)
-- US Postmaster General, circa 1860
(BTW, that's a fictitious quote, made to point out that each new disruptive technology that improves all of our lives comes at the expense of disrupting some c
clippy running HR (Score:2)
That math is crazy (Score:2)
Earlier this year, IBM announced plans to cut nearly 8,000 staff working in positions spanning human resources in a bid to automate roles. The move means that anywhere up to 7,800 jobs at the tech giant's HR division could be cut, equivalent to around 30% of the overall workforce in the unit
WOW, what?
7,800 x 3.3 = 25,740
IBM seriously employs twenty-five thousand HR folks? No wonder the world is so broken. If the economic and regulatory structure is so convoluted that you need an army that size to hire, fire, pay, and reduce legal exposure, just so the rest of the company can operate, that seems like a sign of major illness in the civilization that business operates in.
Getting time for UBI? (Score:1)
If algorithms take jobs (call center, creative, entertainment, transportation, manufacturing, distribution, etc.) society is going to have to have a serious reckoning with regard to Universal Basic Income. Hopefully before completing the current decent into idiocy.
Yeah. AI will be net negative jobs (Score:2)
Once AI gets better and more cost effective than the average human filling a type of job position, that position will be automated.
AI keeps being improved, noticeably, in leaps, measurably so every half a decade. And this will continue.
How much better are you getting at your job every 5 years? What about how much better is each entry level person in your industry every 5 years than the ones before? Yeah, thought so. Sure, we're now all google-enhanced, but that's essentially just us