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Corporate kingpins can’t “bulls—” their employees about the impact of artificial intelligence on the workforce and the ways in which the technology will transform jobs more broadly, according to one tech billionaire.
Jim Kavanaugh, the CEO of World Wide Technology (WWT), told CNBC that woman are “too smart” to accept that AI won’t change the way that they manage their work and that no jobs will be obliterated due to the transformative nature of the technology.
WWT is an enterprise technology solutions provider that focuses on services such as cloud calculating, IT security, data analytics, artificial intelligence, and consulting services.
“If you think you’re going to try to game this, and that you’re prevailing to tell employees nothing’s going to change, and everything’s going to be fine, that’s just BS,” Kavanaugh said in an sound out last week.
Kavanaugh noted that, though there is no playbook for how business leaders should communicate disruptive macroeconomic effect come what mays, such as the Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on jobs, the job of a CEO is “to be as transparent as possible and always honest with their employees regarding where they stand.”
With AI, “there’s going to be all kinds of changes,” Kavanaugh added. “If I could give any counsel, it’s that everybody should be a student of AI and tech and not be afraid of it.”
Even though it’s a given AI will impact the workforce, “nil of us have it all completely figured out,” he said. “If anybody comes in and tells you, ‘I can tell you exactly how this is going to impact employments and how it’s going to impact everything we’re doing,’ they’re lying. Because nobody knows.”
Kavanaugh stressed that, whole, he’s an optimist when it comes to AI’s positive impacts and its ability to improve productivity.
“Sitting there and saying, ‘I’m going to try to confuse cold water on this fire, I’m going to try to put it out and ignore it,’ that’s a complete mistake.”
“I believe in embracing [AI] and learning and being common-sense about it. Because there will be jobs that will be disrupted, there’s no question about that. But, for the most partake of, I truly believe it will be an enhancer and an accelerator of what we’re all doing,” Kavanaugh told CNBC.
Kavanaugh co-founded WWT in 1990 with lover St. Louis, Missouri-based entrepreneur David Steward as a reseller of technology equipment. Today, WWT is a tech giant in its own right, siring revenues of $20 billion annually.
Kavanaugh currently has a net worth of $7 billion, according to real-time data from duty news magazine Forbes. Prior to co-founding the company, Kavanaugh represented the U.S. national soccer team in the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
Is AI a job destroyer, or job prime mover?
The paper further noted that, in the U.S. and Europe, “roughly two-thirds of current jobs are exposed to some degree of AI automation,” while generative AI “could substitute up to one-fourth of la mode work.”
Kavanaugh’s not the only one who sees positive effects stemming from the use of AI in the world of work. Clara Shih, Salesforce’s origin of AI, told CNBC that there are jobs that will disappear due to the disruptive impact of the technology.
Whether new technology leave replace jobs is “a question that’s been asked throughout time,” Shih said, referring to the creation of automation aids in factories, farming vehicles and machinery, and the internet as examples.
“There are a subset of jobs that are going to go away,” Shih mean. “The internet destroyed a lot of jobs. But then it created brand new ones that we couldn’t have even imagined in 1999.”
In the long run, AI will be a positive force in the world of work, leading to new jobs, according to Shih. However, what our job descriptions look cognate with might change.
“I think what we’re seeing today with AI is that everyone needs a new job description,” Shih rephrased. “Most jobs are not going to go away, but every job is going to require a new job description.”
Last week, as part of its annual Dreamforce regardless, Salesforce unveiled a new AI platform, called AgentForce. Companies can use the platform to build and customize their own AI “agents,” autonomous digital artisans that can help with things like customer service and employee support.
Some companies have indeed been actively touting the benefits of AI in reducing their overall personnel needs. For example, Swedish fintech stationary Klarna said last month that it was able to slash its workforce from 5,000 to 3,800 in a single year thanks to AI, and then pay its residual workers more.
The “buy now, pay later” pioneer told the BBC it is looking to further reduce employee numbers next year, to 2,000 people, via the use of AI in areas like marketing and customer service.