Published , by TJ Denzer
Published , by TJ Denzer
As major tech companies continue to embrace and apply AI to a wide range of products and businesses, IBM has teased plans to use AI and related automated systems to replace a significant number of jobs within the company. It has frozen hiring on around 7,800 positions which it is targeting to replace with AI and automated technologies over the course of the next five years.
The tease of these plans was first reported via Bloomberg, which recently interviewed IBM CEO Arvind Krishna. In the interview, Krishna shared that among the departments in the company being targeted for AI replacement was Human Resources. IBM hopes to relegate HR duties such as employee movements and services to automated systems. Meanwhile, situations that require a more human-like scrutiny will remain staffed for at least another 10 years. Nonetheless, Krishna went on to say that hiring will be either slowed or paused on further non-customer-facing roles which could affect around 26,000 positions, including the 7,800 positions targeted for direct replacement.
IBM currently employs around 280,000 workers worldwide. The 7,800 positions that could be targeted for replacement by AI would only constitute about 3 percent of its total workforce. Nonetheless, it marks one of the biggest planned replacements of human employees by AI systems since the AI tech craze began. It also comes at a time when the tech industry has been laying off huge numbers of employees to cut costs, such as the layoff of around 10,000 employees at Microsoft and 11,000 employees at Meta.
As AI technology continues to grow via popular services like ChatGPT, it remains to be seen if IBM’s plan to replace 7,800 jobs is the last we see of moves like this. Stay tuned as we continue to follow AI technology here at Shacknews.