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AI will reduce workforce, say 41% of execs in a survey
(www.theregister.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
What's really interesting this time around is AI will cut middle management and paper pushers. Those are typically very good middle class jobs.
Unlike manufacturing, those people really don't have transferable skills. They can't go become mechanics or plumbers.
AI is going to hurt.
The jobs AI would be best at eliminating are HR and management. Instead, corpos give these shitters the power to eliminate other positions and then they still act like HR and management are the people producing value.
This is the risk and it has happened before.
The AI won't do my job exactly, but managers mostly manage, i.e. deal with organisational overhead. That Excel you've been maintaining for the past decade was never as crucial to the business' success as you made it appear. It was something the higher ups liked to talk about with pretty charts. An UI can generate other things to talk about from the same data.
I don't agree that those people don't have transferable skills, but I agree that's going to hurt. Like flattening hierachies, self-organised teams and outsourcing, previously cushy jobs will be replaced with more stressful ones.
You used to have a secretary to make calls for you and organise your calender. Now you have copilot and customers call you directly.
You don't need powerful AI or anything for this to happen. They just stopped hiring secretarial staff when managers learned how to use a computer.