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CEOs Have Started Warning: AI is Coming For Your Job (yahoo.com) 60

Posted by EditorDavid from the CEO-says dept.
It's not just Amazon's CEO predicting AI will lower their headcount. "Top executives at some of the largest American companies have a warning for their workers: Artificial intelligence is a threat to your job," reports the Washington Post — including IBM, Salesforce, and JPMorgan Chase.

But are they really just trying to impress their shareholders? Economists say there aren't yet strong signs that AI is driving widespread layoffs across industries.... CEOs are under pressure to show they are embracing new technology and getting results — incentivizing attention-grabbing predictions that can create additional uncertainty for workers. "It's a message to shareholders and board members as much as it is to employees," Molly Kinder, a Brookings Institution fellow who studies the impact of AI, said of the CEO announcements, noting that when one company makes a bold AI statement, others typically follow. "You're projecting that you're out in the future, that you're embracing and adopting this so much that the footprint [of your company] will look different."

Some CEOs fear they could be ousted from their job within two years if they don't deliver measurable AI-driven business gains, a Harris Poll survey conducted for software company Dataiku showed. Tech leaders have sounded some of the loudest warnings — in line with their interest in promoting AI's power...

IBM, which recently announced job cuts, said it replaced a couple hundred human resource workers with AI "agents" for repetitive tasks such as onboarding and scheduling interviews. In January, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg suggested on Joe Rogan's podcast that the company is building AI that might be able to do what some human workers do by the end of the year.... Marianne Lake, JPMorgan's CEO of consumer and community banking, told an investor meeting last month that AI could help the bank cut headcount in operations and account services by 10 percent. The CEO of BT Group Allison Kirkby suggested that advances in AI would mean deeper cuts at the British telecom company...

Despite corporate leaders' warnings, economists don't yet see broad signs that AI is driving humans out of work. "We have little evidence of layoffs so far," said Columbia Business School professor Laura Veldkamp, whose research explores how companies' use of AI affects the economy. "What I'd look for are new entrants with an AI-intensive business model, entering and putting the existing firms out of business." Some researchers suggest there is evidence AI is playing a role in the drop in openings for some specific jobs, like computer programming, where AI tools that generate code have become standard... It is still unclear what benefits companies are reaping from employees' use of AI, said Arvind Karunakaran, a faculty member of Stanford University's Center for Work, Technology, and Organization. "Usage does not necessarily translate into value," he said. "Is it just increasing productivity in terms of people doing the same task quicker or are people now doing more high value tasks as a result?"

Lynda Gratton, a professor at London Business School, said predictions of huge productivity gains from AI remain unproven. "Right now, the technology companies are predicting there will be a 30% productivity gain. We haven't yet experienced that, and it's not clear if that gain would come from cost reduction ... or because humans are more productive."
On an earnings call, Salesforce's chief operating and financial officer said AI agents helped them reduce hiring needs — and saved $50 million, according to the article. (And Ethan Mollick, co-director of Wharton School of Business' generative AI Labs, adds that if advanced tools like AI agents can prove their reliability and automate work — that could become a larger disruptor to jobs.) "A wave of disruption is going to happen," he's quoted as saying.

But while the debate continues about whether AI will eliminate or create jobs, Mollick still hedges that "the truth is probably somewhere in between."

CEOs Have Started Warning: AI is Coming For Your Job More | Reply

CEOs Have Started Warning: AI is Coming For Your Job

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  • AI can have my job. I don't care. I'm about done with having to work for a living anyway.

    • Itâ(TM)s when the AI comes! What we now have are some glorified string generators. If the CEOâ(TM)s plan is to use them and replace human workers, then we are loudly walking to one of the best depressions in history destroying industries.

    • 1. Talk about AI, add a few AI initiatives
      2. Slow down hiring or lay off employees to cut costs
      3. Since we introduced the AI initiatives, our payroll has gone down and year over year we have saved $50 million on payroll

      The wondering question is: "What will be the new shiny topic, strategy, transformational narrative, or technology for companies, business consultants, Gartner, think tanks, and business school professors to discuss once enough AI projects have failed to produce significant return on investmen

  • It would be good if CEOs switched to scaring employees and appeasing shareholders with threats from AI rather than fake job posts.

  • Job Most Replaceable by AI? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RonVNX ( 55322 ) on Saturday June 21, 2025 @07:37PM (#65466603)

    According to AI experts, the job most replaceable by AI is CEO. Which leads back to why in the world are they so fantastically overpaid?

    • Offer to do their job for less money.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by RonVNX ( 55322 )

        I've known enough CEOs to be mortally embarrassed to be known as one. And no board would believe you were for real unless you asked for an obscenely generous compensation package.

    • Why don't you start a company and put AI in charge?

      You should save a bundle by not paying executive salaries.

      Come back and let us know how it worked out.

  • I'm old enough to remember breathtaking headlines from the first decade of the millennium stating that “technology” will cause half of the jobs in healthcare to disappear.

    Instead, it doubled over the decade.

    Tech breakthroughs will always make certain jobs redundant through automation: the printing press brought an end to the age of the illuminated manuscript scribe. But history shows us tech breakthroughs have always lead to more job total than before.

    • So true. The Silicon Valley is twisting what the invention here also. By constantly hyping AI, they are giving out an impression that autonomous thinking machines are a corner away. The best LLMs we now have is decades away from what they are projected as. I am not undermining the value of LLMs, but we need to take a good look at what it is and how it can progress us forward. Its utility is definitely not for eliminating jobs or saving cost. It would add to the economy and scale of conducting businesses in
    • I hope you can see the difference though. The printing press is not smarter than a human.

      • Neither is an LLM. All it does is give the illusion of intelligence. Then again, so do some humans, like the guy mentioned in my signature.

    • 70% of middle class jobs since the 1980s were taken by automation. [reddit.com]

      It happened, but like most Americans because it didn't happen to you personally it's not real. It doesn't exist.

      Americans can't comprehend a phenomenon that they do not personally experience. It's why there are so many mass shooting survivors that come out in favor of gun control

      • This chart is very starkly at odds with all three of their bullet points:

        https://fred.stlouisfed.org/se... [stlouisfed.org]

        And their article cites several saltwater economists, who usually tend to rely on very strict models which historically have fallen apart. They also seem to be at odds with your daily talking points:

        Rising market power, markups, and deunionization "do not appear to play a major role in US wage inequality," they added.

        It seems like you're disagreeing with yourself. I like this forward-looking quote too:

        f the last four decades are precedent, automation is likely to further displace workers as the US reopens.

        Only that didn't happen -- in 2022 we even saw negative unemployment in several industries.

        • Because of course it did. You don't automate dirt cheap labor first you go after the more expensive stuff first.

          Ignoring the fact that our unemployment statistics are just flat out lies and that industries will always tell you that they have quote unquote negative unemployment in order to bring in more h1bs the fact of the matter is the automation initially was targeted towards factory workers because they were unionized and so they could demand better wages. Factory workers were prone to unionization b

          • Because of course it did. You don't automate dirt cheap labor first you go after the more expensive stuff first.

            The Luddites weren't dirt cheap, but their job was surprisingly easy to replace with machinery. Before that machinery, unless you were incredibly rich you'd only get a new set of clothes about once a year, and odds are they were used, including the underwear.

            Ignoring the fact that our unemployment statistics are just flat out lies and that industries will always tell you that they have quote unquote negative unemployment

            So far I've witnessed infosec at three companies, and all three of them were constantly in search of new employees. There was never a moment when they weren't hiring, even when other departments had a hiring freeze during COVID. That has been constant o

    • I'm old enough to remember breathtaking headlines from the first decade of the millennium stating that “technology” will cause half of the jobs in healthcare to disappear.

      Instead, it doubled over the decade.

      Tech breakthroughs will always make certain jobs redundant through automation: the printing press brought an end to the age of the illuminated manuscript scribe. But history shows us tech breakthroughs have always lead to more job total than before.

      Historically, that's true. However, that's a coincidence, like Moore's Law. Also, most breakthroughs occur so slowly that the economy has time to adjust. Technology has replaced lots of people working in photography, travel agents, typists, stenographers, but it took awhile for each. Once you have AI that works as promised, you're going to have a massive amount of job loss. The only shining light is that modern AI is a pyramid scheme and the results are never as promised...but what if that changes?

      I

      • I'm with y'all on the complete over-hype of LLMs. They'll be another useful tool in several toolbelts, but as a coder, the greatest boost to my productivity ever was... a second monitor. I've been speaking on this hype wave for years now, here's a talk I gave at DjangoCon US in 2023: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

        If Altman or Amodei say it, you can believe we're nowhere close to it. :)

  • Some CEOs fear they could be ousted from their job within two years if they don't deliver measurable AI-driven business gains, a Harris Poll survey

    What this tells me is that CEOs aren't knowledgeable enough to understand the severe limitations of AI. As a result, they are compelled to push AI use into their company simply because preliminary results show AI being effective at certain tasks. They clearly want to deploy AI and think it will decrease costs thereby improving profitability and thus raising their stock price. However, it has not panned out as doing what they think but they have not come to terms with that just yet.

    TL;DR: CEOs drank the "AI

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      What this tells me is that CEOs aren't knowledgeable enough to understand the severe limitations of AI.

      They may understand perfectly well.

      From TFS:

      Some CEOs fear they could be ousted from their job within two years if they don't deliver measurable AI-driven business gains

      They fear an unknowing investment community. Who will demand, "Do AI or else." The Googles and Microsofts have figured out how to run a protection racket. "That's a nice little pile of stock options ya' got there, buddy. Either do business with us or it would be a shame if something happened to them."

  • I'm sure an AI can replace most of them.

  • ... when someone makes a pitch to the VC people: The company will be just me, my executive secretary and an AI in a rack in the basement. It'll be cheap compared to a bunch of employees and expensive office space. So, invest accordingly.

    In reality, everyone knows that not every job will go. So this is just a threat to lower your demands or we'll put you on the chopping block. The first half to sign up for the cuts can stay. Everyone else, get out.

  • AI is expensive to train and run (Score:3)

    by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Saturday June 21, 2025 @08:23PM (#65466665) Homepage Journal

    Which is why we should focus on replacing jobs that pay the most. Ideally jobs that have rather subjective measures of success, like CEO, are ideal because even if AI is terrible at it; nobody will be able to tell the difference or offer any agreeable criticism of its performance.

    • At least not like that. I don't understand why Americans like to pretend they don't have a ruling class but I know we really really like to pretend. Personally I stopped playing pretend around the age of 9 or 10ish.

      • The theater that we play in America, that we're an egalitarian democracy, is a coping mechanism. We lost the Cold War with the Soviet Union (they lost too), even though we never recognized that it destroyed us. And we lost the War on Terror, when we wiped the remaining protections of the Constitution away.
        I realized my country was in tatters when we had no fly lists and I had to take my shoes off the fly on a plane. I still don't have a Real ID and I can no longer fly.

  • It doesn't have to be AI (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Saturday June 21, 2025 @08:37PM (#65466681)
    They're looking to automate everything they possibly can. Lots and lots of stuff that could have been automated years ago but wasn't is now going to get automated.

    Remember CEOs can't just make statements like this, at least not unless they are Elon Musk. These kind of statements come with fiduciary responsibility. The affect the stock price because investors are expecting bigger returns because of fewer employees.

    That means that the CEOs believe this. And that means they're going to do large scale layoffs whether the technology works or not.

    If it works then great for them right? If it doesn't work great for them because the people they don't fire will be forced to work double time to make up for all the people who got fired.

    You allowed a civilization to form where the ruling class wins no matter what. There are consequences for doing that. You had your reasons for doing it and now you've got the consequences.

    • My understanding is that musk normalized lying to shareholders and getting away with it. The shareholders discovered that if he made really big lies the stock went up enormously, and they liked that. It took years for other ceos to catch on but now its generally considered the thing a really successful buisness leader ought to do. Examples of promising things that the ceos almost certainly know are not going to happen soon include

      Michael Saylor says a BTC will be worth $5 million
      Mark Zuckerburg saying digit

      • That only works if the stock keeps going up. Musk is so incredibly powerful and wealthy now he can get away with crashing the stock as long as he doesn't screw over his fellow 0.1%ers.

        but if you try that as a regular CEO you still get your ass handed to you when the stock eventually comes back to Earth.
      • Dude, it's not Elon's fault. When you've got a country where more than half of the population sees nothing wrong with voting in a convicted felon as their president, you've got way bigger problems.

    • They're looking to automate everything they possibly can.

      They're not the only ones. It seems somebody automated you, after all, and you know exactly what I'm referring to. I'd say their work is pretty good as the copy is completely faithful to the original, but I won't because at the end of the day, it's not as if they cloned anything that can show any signs of intelligence, even if it was only an illusion.

    • "You allowed a civilization to form where the ruling class wins no matter what"

      Rsilvergun is also part of this 'you'. Don't blame everyone else while proclaiming your own innocence.

  • Expected! (Score:3)

    by Parker Lewis ( 999165 ) on Saturday June 21, 2025 @08:46PM (#65466687)
    If you are a CEO and you're not repeating the AI mantra, you'll be the one to get replaced.
  • It is universally hated and brings very little value. Everything related to benefits and hiring can be handled by AI and teams themselves.

  • Saying fucking asshole things. They're tired of having to pay skilled labour what it's worth, and AI isn't going to actually take the jobs, so they have to make everyone scared by saying things like this and laying off hundreds of people at a time.

    Funny how such easy to predict actions aren't being threatened with being replaced. As more than one other person has said here, CEOs are ripe for replacing; nobody would even notice the difference.

  • AI is actually coming for your fucking "job"

  • Media takes be like: more jobs == good... but then, layoffs due to overhiring is just a natural outcropping and is always blamed on AI.
    Less water / electricity use and a lower carbon footprint was an ideal, but now a massive upswing water / electricity use, diverting it away from living breathing carbon creatures that need it is just the cost of doing business.
    VC spending money on bullshit business concepts is good.. until that well dried up, and then oh well, it was nice when it lasted. Media takes boil d

  • So who will be buying all these supposedly great AI products? No one will be able to afford anything beyond the barest of necessities. Trillions in shareholder value wiped out ;)

    • So who will be buying all these supposedly great AI products? No one will be able to afford anything beyond the barest of necessities. Trillions in shareholder value wiped out ;)

      Precisely. Assuming AI really matches the hype to some extent, producing the stuff people need will be a lot cheaper in terms of hours worked. So people will have to work fewer hours to pay for it.The people who should be worried are investors. Because AI may make access to capital a lot less important.

      The assumption seems to be that a small group will control AI and everyone else will have to go to them hat in hand. I am not sure that is the way it will work. There was a time when IBM was king because they

      • The problem is, most young people in the US don't own any land and can't afford to buy any. So they will always need food and rent. So once everything has been automated the only job left is sharecropper.
        • I think AI will likely allow automation of most food production. One of the general rules of technology is that people always overestimate how quickly change will happen and underestimate how profound it will be. I suspect AI will follow that pattern. I think its unlikely that profound change will result in people being entirely idle. I think its hard in a society where jobs define who people are to imagine a human community where that isn't really true. Where there is enough for everyone but human activit

    • No one will be able to afford anything beyond the barest of necessities.

      Why can't the unemployed people just make stuff for each other?

      They could even use a medium of exchange to make their transactions more efficient.

  • That said, here's my prediction
    Technologically clueless CEOs will believe the hypemongers and spend a lot of money on early AI systems
    Some will work well, some OK and some will fail catastrophically
    Eventually, a balance will be found, but the transition will not be smooth

  • We should be pushing hard to unionize the tech sector and then using those unions to collectively act against attempts to replace workers with AI.

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