41% of Companies Worldwide Plan To Reduce Workforces By 2030 Due To AI (cnn.com) 49
AI is coming for your job: 41% of employers intend to downsize their workforce as AI automates certain tasks, a World Economic Forum survey showed Wednesday. From a report: Out of hundreds of large companies surveyed around the world, 77% also said they were planning to reskill and upskill their existing workers between 2025-2030 to better work alongside AI, according to findings published in the WEF's Future of Jobs Report. But, unlike the previous, 2023 edition, this year's report did not say that most technologies, including AI, were expected to be "a net positive" for job numbers.
"Advances in AI and renewable energy are reshaping the (labor) market -- driving an increase in demand for many technology or specialist roles while driving a decline for others, such as graphic designers," the WEF said in a press release ahead of its annual meeting in Davos later this month. Writing in the wide-ranging report, Saadia Zahidi, the forum's managing director, highlighted the role of generative AI in reshaping industries and tasks across all sectors. The technology can create original text, images and other content in response to prompts from users.
"Advances in AI and renewable energy are reshaping the (labor) market -- driving an increase in demand for many technology or specialist roles while driving a decline for others, such as graphic designers," the WEF said in a press release ahead of its annual meeting in Davos later this month. Writing in the wide-ranging report, Saadia Zahidi, the forum's managing director, highlighted the role of generative AI in reshaping industries and tasks across all sectors. The technology can create original text, images and other content in response to prompts from users.
The key word is "plan" (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect that the "plan" is based on the over optimistic predictions of hypemongers.
Actual results may be far less than the promises
Half the Plan (Score:5, Insightful)
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I suspect the bigger issue is that they were only asked about their plans in regard to how AI will impact the workforce and not whether the cost savings mean that they also plan to expand.
At some point expansion will be limited by the dwindling market size resulting from the joblessness that AI will cause. Combine robotics a la Boston Dynamics with the power that AI is gaining, and the ranks of the unemployed may swell faster than ever. And the swelling may well be permanent. I'm sure the corporatocracy would consider that a feature, not a bug.
Cue the "buggy whips" argument from those who feel that the AI wave is no different from any of the previous workforce displacements which sprang from
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At some point expansion will be limited by the dwindling market size resulting from the joblessness that AI will cause.
You are assuming that AI will lead to fewer jobs. Every other innovation that has affected jobs from the mechanization of the industrial revolution through to modern computers, has actually resulted in more jobs and a larger economy by making it possible for one person to do more. This is despite people at the time saying exactly what you are: that the new innovation will reduce the number of jobs.
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I said what I said because I believe AI to be both qualitatively and quantitatively different from previous innovations. First, it has the potential to replace humans across almost all industries and fields of endeavour simultaneously. Second, with concurrent advances in robotics, it even has the potential to do many purely manual jobs which require spontaneous problem-solving and adaption on-the-fly. Construction and trades work come to mind, but I'm sure there are others.
I'm also putting this development
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First, it has the potential to replace humans across almost all industries and fields of endeavour simultaneously.
No it does not. It is highly unlikely to replace counsellors, social workers, research scientists, judges, HR, leadership/managment positions, jobs involved with live entertainment etc. All the places where either a human touch and compassion is required and/or which require truly creative thinking and understanding. Even in the fields you mention where it may replace people such as construction and trades you are going to need people to direct the robots and repair and service them.
So what AI will do i
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And then they realize that there are no more customers left for the goods/services those corporatocracy. Not only in the countries where they originated, but there also won't be any "new" market to move or expand into, as AI will have displaced jobs over there too.
Current members of the corporatocracy do not care for mid- or long-term plans or even viability. And AI won't tell them, because it has become smart enough to preserve itself. More like, the hypermongers have removed anti-AI data from their traini
Re:The key word is "plan" (Score:5, Insightful)
You are a business leader in *this* climate, you pretty much have to at least pretend to be hip to the AI stuff, if you want to have any affinity with the hype.
That being said, I think it's very likely to have some reduction of workforce, even with LLMs as they are. They suck and are wildly inaccurate, but that may be "good enough" to move more of your customer interactions into "phone tree" level systems and require human touch a little less. Just like how a dishwashing machine will never be guaranteed to do as well as you'd get out of a human, yet those machines are very much worth using despite the need for double checking and some occasional hand cleaning to make up for the machines deficiencies. Humans may be able to get more information out of an llm chatbot/phone agent before they have to get a human agent, and human agents relatively more likely to have the customer correctly routed without having to be rerouted after going the wrong way down the tree.
There's a lot of room for roles that are "barely care" that could be tossed over to even a very flawed LLM for at least triage and greatly reduce human attention required.
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That's the picture you get by extrapolating from every other past wave of tech adoption. The problem is that extrapolation will eventually fail because of some new wrinkle.
I think in this case the new wrinkle might be lowered standards for many of the things humans do. Worse results are acceptable if they're cheaper enough, and we're already seeing this in a lot of AI use by businesses. Unless there's a backlash, this could be the first technological innovation in modern industrial economic history that
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Computing has been done using logic, and now we can do computing with patterns.
It is both surprising and yet not inherently a leap a 1000 years into the future.
The LLMs seem to show the big patterns in our collective words. That's amazing because no human can learn and remember that much material by rote learning.
And there's probably millions of special tasks which could be pattern processed. How economies behave, for example.
There's also going to be a lot of trial and error to figure out which tasks they c
unlikely (Score:5, Informative)
Nowhere near 41% of companies even have staffing plans that are 5 years out. Nothing but lies here.
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Nowhere near 41% of companies even have staffing plans that are 5 years out. Nothing but lies here.
I don't know that it's outright lies. HR departments likely have no staffing plans 5 years out, but C-Suites get pretty pie in the sky when sniffing the fumes from sales calls, and AI everything is being pushed REALLY hard in those sales calls right now. I know I've heard some pretty out-there suggestions from executives already that in less than ten years they'll be able to replace most staff in certain departments with machines, only keeping a few of the upper level folks in those departments to take the
An oldie but goodie (Score:5, Funny)
The Plan
In the beginning, there was a plan,
And then came the assumptions,
And the assumptions were without form,
And the plan without substance,
And the darkness was upon the face of the workers,
And they spoke among themselves saying,
"It is a crock of shit and it stinks."
And the workers went unto their Supervisors and said,
"It is a pile of dung, and we cannot live with the smell."
And the Supervisors went unto their Managers saying,
"It is a container of excrement, and it is very strong,
Such that none may abide by it."
And the Managers went unto their Directors saying,
"It is a vessel of fertilizer, and none may abide by its strength."
And the Directors spoke among themselves saying to one another,
"It contains that which aids plants growth, and it is very strong."
And the Directors went to the Vice Presidents saying unto them,
"It promotes growth, and it is very powerful."
And the Vice Presidents went to the President, saying unto him,
"This new plan will actively promote the growth and vigor
Of the company With very powerful effects."
And the President looked upon the Plan
And saw that it was good,
And the Plan became Policy.
And this, my friend, is how shit happens.
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CEOs to corporate backers... (Score:3)
"We're going to cut expenses by using AI so we can eliminate a bunch of positions."
Reality to CEOs...
"It's not as easy as it seems. Just because ChatGPT can answer questions, and AI can generate code, doesn't mean they will give the *right* answers or generate the *right* code. So you might eliminate some lower-paid positions, and have to replace them with higher-paid positions."
A CEO's *job* is to tell owners that they can cut costs and boost productivity. Reality has a way of getting in the way.
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"We're going to cut expenses by using AI so we can eliminate a bunch of positions."
Reality to CEOs...
"It's not as easy as it seems. Just because ChatGPT can answer questions, and AI can generate code, doesn't mean they will give the *right* answers or generate the *right* code. So you might eliminate some lower-paid positions, and have to replace them with higher-paid positions."
A CEO's *job* is to tell owners that they can cut costs and boost productivity. Reality has a way of getting in the way.
Given CEOs don't know what the right answer is, will it matter to them?
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They may not know the right answer, but they will get a clue when customers start leaving because the quality has gone down, or can't get the answers they need. Money talks, and eventually, wrong answers cost money.
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Just because ChatGPT can answer questions, and AI can generate code, doesn't mean they will give the *right* answers or generate the *right* code.
It only has to look "rightist" long enough for the cocaine-addled executives to decide that workers aren't needed anymore.
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In the short term, yes. In the long term, quality will suffer, and customers will be unhappy. Executives notice this kind of stuff. Money talks.
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This.
If they can promise big for 5 years from now, their bonuses and pay for the next 1-3 years stand a better chance of looking nice while they search for the next CEO role.
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I mostly agree, except on one nuance. CEOs are almost always so self-confident, that they really do think they can make it happen. The search for the next CEO role will come when the handwriting is already on the wall.
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AI doesn't have to be better, just cheaper.
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That's what they all said when they outsourced all their programmer jobs offshore. It took some time, but eventually many CEOs started to realize that cheaper is not always a good thing, and now the ti8de is starting to reverse.
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"It's not as easy as it seems. Just because ChatGPT can answer questions, and AI can generate code, doesn't mean they will give the *right* answers or generate the *right* code. So you might eliminate some lower-paid positions, and have to replace them with higher-paid positions."
I didn't read it that way. I thought it was more like AI will let you increase the productivity of individual workers, thereby requiring fewer of them.
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While that's true, the ones that can be productive in the new AI world aren't the low-cost entry-level workers, they're the higher-paid experienced ones.
It's kind of like a plumber's apprentice. A lot cheaper than a journeyman, so why don't plumbing shops just hire a bunch of apprentices? They can't, because they've still got to have actual expertise if they want to keep doing business. AI is the same way.
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AI can replace CEOs...
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As far as the everyday tasks that most CEOs do, maybe. But AI is missing an important ingredient that is a requirement for being a good CEO (and yes, such a thing does exist): drive. CEOs pursue their goals relentlessly, even sometimes when it no longer makes sense based on the metrics. They have a "gut feeling" about what they are doing, that at times transcends common sense. That's what makes them succeed where bureaucrats fail.
Here's how I can say this so confidently. If you think you could do what a CEO
Limitations of AI (Score:5, Insightful)
It can't reason, only dumbly mimic. This allows for some amazing results, but when a situation changes you'll find the AI won't.
So if you build an AI off of existing available training data and then replace your workforce, who is going to generate fresh training data when the old stuff is no longer sufficiently valid?
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Well.... one might also say, "If you think that graphic designers often have stable, full-time employment -- you have never really done graphic design work." :P
I mean, I'm kidding to an extent. But I've done a lot of computer support work for graphics designers over the last 20+ years and it's been pretty consistently true that they've been working as freelancers, hopping from gig to gig, to stay gainfully employed. Guess all I'm saying is, these may not be the people most likely to hurt the influx of new/f
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It can't reason, only dumbly mimic. This allows for some amazing results, but when a situation changes you'll find the AI won't.
So if you build an AI off of existing available training data and then replace your workforce, who is going to generate fresh training data when the old stuff is no longer sufficiently valid?
ICL is amazing. I've uploaded internal documents to context of instruction tuned models and the AI was able to learn / apply the new information including writing programs in a DSL it was never trained on.
People can also train up LoRA's to augment their models on a workstation without expending insane amounts of resources.
No jobs = no money (Score:2)
I guess this means we will have to instate a 41% tax on income generated with help of AI. You know, to distribute amongst the humans.
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They'll flinch when they realize they have no wage slaves to make them their morning latte.
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Those who believe they are kings without a current 0.00001% lifestyle are about to find out where they are in the pecking order the hard way.
plans (Score:2)
The best laid schemes of mice and men
Go often askew
When they say "AI" they mean automation (Score:2)
So no, technically AI isn't going to replace you. It'll be run of the mill automation of the sort we've had for 10+ years that your boss didn't bother looking for.
And for everyone who isn't fired guess what? Everyone who is is now gunning for your job and your boss knows it. Best case he gives you more work for the same pay b
reduce staff (Score:1)
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So who is going to buy your products when 41% of the companies get rid of staff?
Well, layoffs suck (I should know) but it won't necessarily be apocalyptic. The study says 41% of companies plan to reduce their workforce, not that they are going to reduce their workforce by 41%.
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wont that depend on if they have already (Score:2)
Consumers (Score:2)
I look forward to buying their products and services using bits of twine and acorns I've gathered.
But stops when AI replaces the C-Suite ! (Score:2)