Amazon’s decision to eliminate thousands of corporate jobs this week fueled a long-standing fear that people could soon be replaced by artificial intelligence. The tech behemoth joined an increasing number of US businesses that have blamed layoffs on AI technology.
However, others doubt that AI is solely to blame and question whether recent high-profile layoffs are a reliable indicator of how the technology is affecting jobs. The online learning company Chegg announced a 45% employment decrease on Monday, citing the “new realities” of artificial intelligence. Salesforce’s CEO claimed that AI agents were handling customer care when the company eliminated 4,000 positions last month.
Since last year, UPS has eliminated 48,000 positions, the company announced on Tuesday. The CEO of the delivery company had already connected machine learning to redundancies.
However, according to Martha Gimbel, executive director of the Budget Lab at Yale University, extrapolating from executives’ statements during layoffs is “possibly the worst way” to assess how AI will affect jobs. According to her, company-specific dynamics are frequently at work.
There is a real habit, because people is so scared out about the possible impact of AI on the labour market going forward, to overreact with individual company announcements,” Ms Gimbel stated.
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