AI insiders want workers to code smarter, think harder, and be more human — but still dodge the question of how many jobs artificial intelligence will destroy.
Reassurance echoed throughout HumanX, a four-day conference that attracted about 6,500 investors, entrepreneurs and tech executives, even as a blunt advertisement at the entrance set the tone: “Stop hiring humans.”
On the main stage, May Habib, chief executive of an AI platform called Writer, told the audience that Fortune 500 bosses were having a “collective panic attack” on the topic.
The worry is well-founded. More and more companies are directly citing AI in announcing job cuts.
Prominent example on the rise: Salesforce laid off 4,000 customer support workers, saying AI now handles 50% of their work.
Chief executive Jack Dorsey has announced plans to cut the company’s headcount by nearly half, citing “smart tools” that have fundamentally changed the way companies operate.
Not all the claims are uncontroversial — some economists say companies are turning to AI to streamline layoffs that are essentially over-hiring or cost-cutting before huge infrastructure investments.
OpenAI’s Sam Altman talked about “AI laundering,” and most speakers at the San Francisco event also dismissed citing AI as a false excuse for job cuts — even as they predicted imminent disruption.
Matt Garman, chief executive of cloud computing giant Amazon Web Services, said AI will “transform every company, every job, every way we work.”
– ‘Quite worrying’ –
The debate is still heated. Two years ago, Nvidia chief Jensen Huang announced that the ultimate goal was to make it “no one has to program” or write code.
“We would consider it some of the worst career advice ever given,” Andrew Ng, founder of training platform DeepLearning.AI, countered on Tuesday.
In his view, coding is not an outdated skill – AI is simply making it available to more people.
Another argument has been made in Silicon Valley: interpersonal skills will become more valuable than ever, with some even considering a humanities education as good preparation for a tech career.
“As AI can do more, the things that will distinguish and differentiate a given employee will be human skills – critical thinking, communication, teamwork,” said Greg Hart, chief executive of training platform Coursera.