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41% of Employers Worldwide Say They'll Reduce Staff by 2030 Due to AI
- itake 2y agoThere is literally an infinite amount of work for tech to do. I think there is a deeper issues going on.
- bb88 2y agoI think it's called greed.
- from-nibly 2y agoGreed is a lazy excuse. Why not just say badness or villiany?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Juliate 2y agoThat is putting intent where it is neither needed nor in capacity. Greed is enough.
- from-nibly 2y agoNo it's not enough. It doesn't mean anything. A company cannot have an over abundance of desire for profit. A person cannot have an over abundance of desire for profit. They CAN commit crimes, and make morally reprehensible decisions. Talk about those.
- Juliate 2y agoGreed (and lust) is enough of a primary reason, which in turn drives the crime; or the kompromat that enables the crime. If we want to mitigate (and we have to), we talk about the crimes and the legal structure that enables those. If we want to mitigate further (because that is not fixable), we need to talk about greed and lust that is ingrained in us, and that is both the weakness and the cause of this absurd derailment of capitalism without democratic oversight. A company can't have desires, but the persons, owning this company, definitely can, and have. And that is not mitigated enough in some countries where fiscal and legal regulations are, let's say, tainted by "rich people's interest".
- gnabgib 2y agoOriginal source The Future of Jobs Report 2025 (2 points, no comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42637456 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42637456
- iambateman 2y agoNo one in the world knows within an order of magnitude what the effects of AI will be on hiring in 2030. To pretend otherwise is foolish.
- WhyOhWhyQ 2y agoWithout looking at the actual report, it is a pretty meaningless statistic. Maybe it's more significant by job category, but if hiring can either go up or down, and you say about half think it's going down, you haven't suggested a non-trivial conclusion.
- toss1 2y agoYUP They also predicted that the personal computer on everyone's desk, and every major software category, etc. would reduce employment. It just made more work
- o11c 2y agoI can guarantee that AI will be used as an excuse to lower wages.
- RIMR 2y agoTo be fair, businesses will use any excuse they can find to lower wages.
- lotsofpulp 2y agoI also shop around for lower prices. I think many people do, at both work and at home.
- wahnfrieden 2y agoCompanies will pay as much as the market requires them to, and they will even illegally collude to manipulate that market (eg Steve Jobs) and strive to atomize workers against coordinating for better pay and conditions (while themselves coordinating via C-level social groups, investors and wage & benefits consultancies for market research data and guidance)
- BuyMyBitcoins 2y agoHow many other people here had some “dazzling” in-house AI tool quietly fade away because it simply wasn’t useful? Where I work the AI hype faded and executive leadership went back to the tried and true “just outsource this to overseas contractors” method of trying to reduce staffing costs.
- forgotoldacc 2y agoThe company I work at went all in on ChatGPT subscriptions to help programmers. They tried to get us to use it for debugging and everything. People went from using it nonstop to maybe using it once a week. All subscriptions were canceled and it's basically relegated to toy status now.
- BobbyTables2 2y agoWouldn’t mind seeing 41% of executives unemployed…
- RIMR 2y agoThere is no group of people more fitting to be replaced by machines. Unfortunately, they have the means to ensure that they will be the last to be replaced. Brace yourselves for technofeudalism...
- cellis 2y agoI disagree. In fact they’ll be the FIRST to be replaced, as that is the richest target for replacement. Think about it. You wouldn’t build a robot (R+D costs) to do the job of someone cheap unless you can build many many robots and amortize the cost over millions. Soldiers for instance are EXTREMELY expensive; so in modern theaters they’re being replaced with drones and missiles. And executives are being replaced with automation in that there are less and less of them and the ones that remain have much higher leverage.
- est31 2y agoExecutives are paid handsomely because of the value they bring to the company. Part of an executive's job is to meet with executives of other companies and make deals with executives of other companies. Those deals work, but they require the human element. Executives don't do their jet set lifestyle just for fun, they do it because human connection creates the best deals. There is humans all around executives, they are in meetings with humans all the time, both inside and outside of the company. They even have humans to interact with computers for them because they are so busy interacting with other humans. Where do you see executives being replaced?
- sitkack 2y ago> they do it because human connection creates the best deals. please. We will start to see entire AI driven companies. The change doesn't happen with incumbents it happens with what replaces the incumbents.
- walterbell 2y agoWEF 2018, https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2018/ https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-repo... > by 2022, 62% of organization’s information and data processing and information search and transmission tasks will be performed by machines compared to 46% today. Even those work tasks that have thus far remained overwhelmingly human—communicating and interacting (23%); coordinating, developing, managing and advising (20%); as well as reasoning and decision-making (18%)—will begin to be automated (30%, 29%, and 27% respectively). WEF 2020, https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2020/in-full/executive-summary/#executive-summary https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-repo... > we estimate that by 2025, 85 million jobs may be displaced by a shift in the division of labour between humans and machines, while 97 million new roles may emerge that are more adapted to the new division of labour between humans, machines and algorithms. Asymptotic Intelligence is almost here!
- neom 2y agoI run an accelerator out of a huge law firm in Canada. I'm not much involved with the firm outside of using the startup lawyers to get the work done for my founders, but lunch room chatting happens. It's been interesting to hear the discussion: inbound is actually increasing due to AI, AI is both giving bad advice (or more often, good advice badly) and drafting nonsense, or missing so much case law it build weak cases etc. I don't think we will hire less, I don't think we'll downsize, I think we'll just take on work we said no to perviously because it wasn't interesting or whatever, and I think client satisfaction will increase. (also AI tools for huge firm lawyers doing big client files are comically bad, one large legacy player recently turned on the AI feature and it kept telling the lawyers to consult a lawyer)
- fl4tul4 2y agoThe tools will get better in time, with human assistance. They will learn how to get better at providing results. Nowadays, there's confusion, however, there is room for improvements.
- neom 2y agoI agree. One funny thing I observed happen was it seemed maybe last year we'd slow associate hiring, but they took a pretty measured wait and see approach, and they set up an AI team to basically very quickly end to end test every tool they could. Coming out of the year two things were clear: AI was still not great for the type of work they do (it's "enterprise law", think $1k/hr lawyers), but the EAs and Paralegals etc will be able to get way more done in a day (but ChatGPT or whatever is fine for their work) and 2025 was going to be a pretty busy year. I'm starting to think the firm will only grow as a result of AI. a year ago I thought they would all be replaced, but as I spend time with them and see their work, I realized I knew nothing about big law, half the job is therapist and talking people out of being emotional and brash before you can even get to the lawyering. Lots of tacit knowledge too, this regulator has this guy who always rejects the application if the format isn't this way, or this judge never accepts that argument, or yeah I've negotiated against him 30 times, he hates yellow so wear yellow. The legal system is a very fundamental human thing after all.
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- RIMR 2y agoGo ahead and do it. Let's see how their precious AI datacenters compete against the Molotov cocktails of the unemployed. Unless there's a plan to prevent poverty as a result of mass unemployment, there will be another Luddite movement. For what it's worth, the original Luddite movement was 100% right. They were slandered as being irrationally afraid of technology, when the reality is that they valued human outcomes over corporate profits, and didn't take well to being replaced by machines. Let's just hope the next Luddite movement isn't defeated the same way the original Luddite movement was defeated (by murdering the Luddites). There's a growing attitude in America right now to rid society of exploitive ruling class elites. I foresee a "let them eat cake" moment coming soon.
- c0redump 2y ago> a growing attitude.. to rid society of.. elites No there isn’t. We just collectively elected a billionaire real estate developer from NYC to be our president. He’s friends with other members of the ownership class, and has demonstrated, before even taking office, that their elite interests are far more important than those of the average American. I guess I can see why you’d think this because of the UHC killing, but you need to zoom out and see the big picture. We are headed full throttle towards oligarchy and plutocracy, while the masses cheer gleefully.
- RIMR 2y agoJust take a visit to Reddit's r/conservative. They may have elected this guy, but they are absolutely not on board with the billionaire class replacing us with machines. I don't really know why they voted for him, but it wasn't for this.
- darth_avocado 2y agoThose employers are going to have to find solutions for keeping themselves around. There’s always a tipping point where enough population is unemployed/impoverished that society starts to collapse. Of enough people are unemployed, who is going to buy all the stuff? Who is going to pay the taxes? Who is going to make sure the employed people can ensure their own safety?
- dare944 2y agoMaybe they'll hire some people back as bodyguards for the CEO?
- darth_avocado 2y agoCEOs won’t be the only people who would need bodyguards. All you have to do to understand what happens in these situations is to look at failed states across the world.
- keyle 2y ago41% of incendiary articles are purely written to gather clicks. Think of the hilarity and irony of the title itself. How could you, really, interview All of the employers Worldwide, and ask them an even relatively correct estimate of a 2030 figure, when they can't even predict what Q3 will look like accurately. "Oh but it's just trend gathering". 41% of the business today won't exist by 2028. And reduce, reduce staff by what? 2%, 10%, 50%? This is just so silly.
- forgetfreeman 2y agoI'm not sure what's sillier, banking on 3rd party bullshit generators to handle work product or ignoring the likelihood that executive tier depravity extends to these kinds of depths when the prospect of cutting labor costs is presented.
- imgabe 2y agoI don’t know, we manage all right with the 1st party bullshit generators.
- forgetfreeman 2y agoYou want to review the hiring slump in software development or perhaps the massive layoffs in middle management nationwide? We could also go take a look at what generative AI is doing to creatives income streams. Careful with that "we", it may not cover as much as you think. Edit: it occurred to me that I may not fully understand what your comment was meant to convey Are you saying labor is doing fine or work product created by generative AI is of acceptable quality?
- imgabe 2y agoI’m making a joke that a lot of existing work product is already bullshit that has to be generated by humans so we may as well automate that.
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- matthest 2y agoAre there any examples of new jobs that are being created because of AI? Or perhaps a boom in small businesses as AI makes it more feasible for entrepreneurs to get leaner?
- BarryMilo 2y agoI remember seeing an uptick in HN job posts, of which a large percentage (30%?) were AI startups. Now, will they still be there in 5 years? 10? Who can say. But technically, right now, they are jobs.
- jppope 2y agotheres going to be a lot more of small business stealing big business cookies than people are currently thinking
- cudgy 2y agoIt does make sense that AI would empower smaller groups, but is important to keep in mind that these AI tools themselves like the LLM models and training, etc. will not be in the hands or created by small groups. Small groups will be beholden to these AI models and the subscription price may go up or even take the model of commercial real estate where they get a percentage of the revenue that’s generated using these tools. The data used to train these models is key. We all need to be very aware of this.
- sumedh 2y agoI have seen jobs for AI Engineering Managers, the description is a bit vague but its mostly use AI to deliver faster.
- cadamsau 2y agoSounds great! My hope is 2030 sees more organizations that are each smaller. It implies more services provided by the economy thanks to greater specialization. For example today, SaaS tools exist for so many things you’d have had to hire for in the past. Thanks to SaaS you can get started really easily - take payments, get a storefront, send email newsletters.. If the trend of increasing specialization crosses over and starts to include services that require intelligence, it will be a net good on a scale we can’t imagine. The megaliths of today also have more market power than optimal, hence so much anti-consumer shenanigans. Bring on the layoffs!
- realce 2y ago> For example today, SaaS tools exist for so many things you’d have had to hire for in the past. Thanks to SaaS you can get started really easily - take payments, get a storefront, send email newsletters.. By definition, SaaS is something you hire a company to do - you're paying for a service > it will be a net good on a scale we can’t imagine Why? > megaliths of today also have more market power than optimal, hence so much anti-consumer shenanigans Are you suggesting that large corporations will shrink market-share because they can all increase automation? How would that work?
- rvz 2y agoBrought this up 4 days ago as soon as Sam Altman posted his "Reflections" blog post. [0] as AI agents will be "joining the workforce" and it is linked to the WEF 2025 Agenda of the "Intelligent Age". Now we have the WEF Future of Jobs Report 2025 with employers admitting that they will accelerate the replacement of jobs even before 2030 with AI. [1] The main takeaway is that this is inevitable, yet the massive problem is that there is no alternative for the destruction of all these jobs. And yes, THAT is exactly what I am preparing for every year before 2030. [2] it will only accelerate faster every single year from now. 5 years is not a long time. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42606771 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42606771 [1] https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2025/ https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-repo... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42563239 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42563239
- realce 2y ago> The main takeaway is that this is inevitable No, the main takeaway is that this might be ATTEMPTED. Success is not inevitable and to take such guarantees from those most motivated to sell AI is foolish.
- tayo42 2y agoHeadline makes no sense because companies all want to grow. Reducing staff to do the same amount of work isn't the goal. IMO this is just clickbait and stuff to get people riled up. In reality when AI becomes that useful we'll just be outputting more, expectations will be higher, probably not being paid more for our new efficiency. In "In Praise of Idleness", theres an interesting point made, if technology that made us more efficient actually allowed us to work less, we would be doing it already, instead were expected to be more productive with the same amount of working hours
- throwaway290 2y agoMost companies on earth are small lifestyle businesses and don't want to infinitely grow. They will fire people if they get to make the same money and pay no salaries, instead a few bucks to Microsoft for gpt trained on people they fired. If you think the world is just wanna be conglomerates and startups you spent too much time with silicon valley type people...
- jpease 2y agoC-suite is a pretty huge salary expense. Seems like prime target for AI replacement. And working for even a glorified clippy would be a better experience than some we’ve all probably encountered.
- sitkack 2y agoC-suite and middle management are at a much larger risk of replacement than ICs.
- cudgy 2y agoPerhaps you underestimate the amount of protection that this class of people provide for themselves. There’s a reason that these groups have golden parachutes and other such protection mechanisms that allow them to exist well beyond any individual contributors. Observe the number of incompetent executives and politicians at the highest level that effortlessly fail upwards.
- sitkack 2y agoI don't, I have attended enough closed doors QBRs and witnessed the effortless upwards failure. They aren't going to replaced by their own, that is for sure.
- ein0p 2y agoThis is written by the same people who claim that 80% or whatever companies will use AI by 2030 etc. I hate to break it to you folks, but this shit is entirely made up, like much of the rest of the clickbait you read online. There's a reason trust in media is at record lows and keeps sliding further. But let's be generous and say this was not made up and it's really something WEF did a survey for. What were those ESG drones supposed to tell WEF? That they're not "progressive"? That they're going to keep their employees or (the horror!) hire more of them? That'd revoke the membership in the cool kids club right away.
- Timber-6539 2y agoThis report from WEF is anything but surprising.
- aitchnyu 2y agoI've been ad-homimeming anybody who is bullish on AI, easy money syndrome (VC) CEOs in usury or other traditional industries, giant software consultancies, bootcamp sellers, AI model companies and wrapper companies etc. The serious reports tend to report a handful of AI job losses.
- JackYoustra 2y agoI, for one, look forward to interest rates staying stuck at zero for a long, long time should this be true should the implication of "no more jobs" be true. Should the implication of "59% of employers are holding or increasing staffing" hold true, then it's time to work another day.
- smm11 2y agoBy 2030? They'll be out of business by 2028 if they aren't mostly AI.
- Finnucane 2y agoWhy shouldn’t we replace managers and executives with AI, and let the rest of us actually get some work done?
- Maro 2y agoI think some jobs will definitely disappear / change due to LLMs. It's already happening, I can tell how I personally effectively elimitated 1-2 jobs around me in 2024 thanks to my $10/mo ChatGPT subscription. I work at a large non-tech company. We have a lot of "Strategy people" and "Strategy teams". What these teams actually do is: create and submit to each other internal plans/KPIs/OKRs, quarterly updates, budgets, and so on. Strategy people are all ex-consultants (many are ex-McKinsey), they have have little domain knowledge. Before ChatGPT, the way it would go is that they'd ask me something like, what is our annual plan for "AI", what is my quarterly update on "Data Platforms", etc. I'd give them some raw input, sometimes I have to do extra work to make it presentable, sometimes they do most of it. The final product is almost always some sort of PPT. Effectively there's 3 phases: 1. I write actual raw (semi-technical) content: usually about 5-10, maximum a page worth of condensed bullet points. I can do this very quickly, in 10-20-30 minutes, since I just have to throw down what I'm doing all day anyway (well, the teams I manage). 2. Convert those raw points into some sort of narrative (if it's a plan), or summary (if it's an update). What part is relevant for a non-technical exec? What part makes the org look good? etc. 3. Convert the narrative to a PTT. Before ChatGPT, I would do 1 and some of 2, and the strategy people would do most of 2 and 3. After ChatGPT, I do 1, I use ChatGPT to do 2 (takes 20-60 minutes), and strategy people now only do 3. This means that in our org, ChatGPT has taken out about 1-2 jobs out of the strategy team (headcount was closed). Once AI is good enough to make the PPTs (upload 2-3 older PPTs to pick up the template and style, plus upload the current narrative, to build new PPT), I will be able to make the whole deck in 1-2 hours, without any strategy people. (Not that I want this, because then I'd be on the hook for the whole process, emailing, etc.) Note that since this is a recurring internal exercise, actual quality doesn't have to be super high. Perhaps once we reach this level of automation people will notice that the whole exercise is inefficient and look for better ways to manage the company.
- n_ary 2y agoInteresting article but sounds like lobbying and fear mongering. Previously, blockchain and crypto currency would kill the banks and give control to the people again, visa/mastercard/whatever would be replaced by executives and businesses to save massive txn costs. Sadly, these articles somehow disappeared now and nearly impossible to find. AI is a solution looking for a problem and some of the best minds had been hired to dumb-down new generation into trusting these bots, so eventually they become reliant and can’t live without AI. See TikTok/FB/Insta in context, how new generation can’t live without these.
- JumpCrisscross 2y agoDo we have any similar articles from the late 90s?
- Maro 2y agoI personally have been using LLMs as coding aids for 1-2 years for my personal fun/toy projects (at work I'm a pure manager these days), and there's just no question that they make me way more effective at churning out higher quality code [than I could write on my own, without the LLM]. I don't have a scientific figure, but I feel I'm getting at least a 2-3x productivity boost, and if I were to invest more time into injecting LLMs into more workflows it would be even more. If I were to boostrap my own startup today, I feel I'd definitely need to hire less juniors to churn out code, instead I'd invest my own time to leverage LLMs increase my own efficiency to be more productive.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y agoNo problem, they will all find new employment at Nvidia, or building new datacenters to house nvidia cards, or digging coal necessary to power those datacenters.
- Over2Chars 2y ago41% of employers won't be here by 2030 due to AI. 41% of middle managers will be replaced in 2030 due to AI.
- nemoniac 2y agoI wonder what David Graeber would have made of this. Would he have said that the staff to be reduced were doing "bullshit jobs" anyway? Or is there even a significant overlap between the reduced staff and the bullshit jobs? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs
- rajnathani 2y agoThere will be more companies to absorb the labor force changes, think small boutique-size (read: nimbler too) companies; the greater number of companies will create further competition in the market and further raise standard-of-living for all besides initially raising standard-of-living due to making at least non-blue collar work easier due to AI.
- cudgy 2y agoThe WEF is essentially the world chamber of commerce. This type of messaging is trying to convince the public that AI is inevitable and there’s nothing that can be done; The underlying message is the public should accept that they are useless for the most part and that being laid off so that existing companies can maximize their profits at the expense of the citizens is a logical conclusion. Similar to the widely held belief that manufacturing of goods in the cheapest place and sending them back to your home country is a good thing, even though it hollows out the middle class, creating poverty and misery for the citizens. Just look around in the US (and other countries) at how the average person lives, or the vast quantities of homeless people wandering around with little purpose. The idea of UBI is another one of these operations. The idea is to keep the public Placid long enough till it’s too late. Most of the people reading this forum understand this even if you don’t publicly state it. People think, “it’ll be OK. I don’t need to have a job. The oligarchy will surely take care of the masses and provide us with enough to live a respectable life.“ Essentially we’re all frogs in a pot if we fall for this.
- disambiguation 2y agoSure there are always narratives at play, but the reality is never really either or. Automation is an objective trend that we have to contend with. Vending machines for example are a menace that threaten to make all retail workers obsolete. I think we still have a long road ahead to a fully automated utopia, but as we become more efficient at converting labor into wealth, we need to get more serious about the problem of fair resource distribution.
- cudgy 2y agoAutomating away retail workers is one thing that has real implications for those workers, but those are low-skilled, low paying jobs that did not require years of training and formal education in many cases. Automating away high tech jobs and other high skill jobs that require significant investments on the part of the workers in human capital along with the great impact these jobs have to local communities due to the higher income and entrepreneurial affects is even more destructive. What incentive do US youth (and youth around the world for that matter) have to invest in these jobs? How does the US reverse the trend if they don’t invest or provide opportunities for their own citizens? What jobs remain if this plays out to its predictable conclusion? How will there be a functional economy if only a few make money and have the money? How will societies prevent revolt when so many people aren’t participating in the economy and feel effectively nationless? Again, it’s about short-term vision from the current leaders without much thought about the long-term implications. Citizens are going to have to wake up or the majority are going to be amongst the homeless wandering around with nothing to do.
- datacruncher01 2y agoThey say that but in my experience, automation leads to more work. If AI does lead to cost savings and improved business, they will have additional demand and need more people though the type of workers they have may change. And if everyone is dumping employees then we'll have a recession and everyone will blame it on AI and start hiring new talent to pivot for shareholders.
- up2isomorphism 2y agoIt is more likely AI is the perfect excuse to layoff people or outsource to other countries. Particularly for those who overly hired during pandemic. From what I see so far, AI has not been able to reduce work force so far, almost always they need skilled worker’s intervention on the results genAI produced.
- sublinear 2y agoThis signals to me it's less about optimism for AI and more about desperation to cut costs. Maybe this headline should be 41% of employers are going to continue shitting the bed until the economy fully recovers, hopefully by 2030.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 2y agoWhat are examples of jobs replaced by AI? Don't tell me chatbots for first line support. Those existed before and are still terrible
- seanmcdirmid 2y agoTaken at face value, this just says that productivity increases are expected, not that less people will be employed. It is completely possible that jobs open up because more things are made/done, new industries pop up, and so on. Governments should really make sure that workers benefit and the jobs keep company, or plan on implementing something like UBI. I have no hope that the incoming US administration is going to be forward thinking though.