Technology giant IBM plans to stop hiring people to fill thousands of roles in the coming years that the company believes artificial intelligence can handle, CEO Arvind Krishna told Bloomberg, marking one of the most serious and tangible threats AI has posed to the workforce.
Krishna said in an interview he believes around 30% of about 26,000 non-customer-facing positions, like human resources jobs, could be replaced by AI over a five-year period—amounting to about 7,800 lost jobs.
HR duties like documenting employee moves to different departments and writing employment verification letters will likely be among the first rolled over to AI, Krishna told Bloomberg.
Jobs focused on interacting with customers and developing software at the 260,000-worker strong company should not be impacted in coming years, according to Krishna.
