AI made me do it...

#artificialintelligence #ai #layoffs #redundancy #shareholdervalue

I understand how business imperatives require tough decisions to be made but when people take a friendly-fire hit there is no cause for celebration. I've let people go. In a fluid business environment it is a certainty. I've never celebrated it.

Celebrations of stock gains are even more profoundly cynical when decisions to shed people are not about business imperatives but about short-term market gains.

The current trend in attributing job cuts to AI (Artificial Intelligence) initiatives is a smokescreen to justify layoffs because institutional investors and other large shareholders attach a massive but still largely unfounded premium on the stocks of companies who evoke AI in their marketing messaging.?

Many have not ven deployed AI, nor do they have a clue how to do it.

AI is not intelligent

A large part of the hype resides on delusions of machine intelligence coming for everybody's job. Yes, there will be winners and losers, but let me clarify that there is NOTHING “intelligent” about AI.

AI is not a magical incantation one repeats over and over until “poof!” out comes a human redundancy fairy. AI is algorithms created by humans that parse unfathomable amounts of data created by humans with unheard of processing power provided by humans to find patterns and spit out something ostensibly coherent to accelerate human productivity.

Intelligence is a human characteristic, and humans are not merely meat computers.

There is no doubt in my mind? that AI is a game changing technology. AIs automation abilities are not new. Unbeknownst to many, concepts akin to ML have driven efficiencies that allowed for the growth and current success of Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Meta, Google, Microsoft.? At these firms, among many others, automation has worked behind the scenes to automate software testing and optimization, to? make “sense” and find patterns in large sets of data, and other applications.?

The way I understand it, tools like Netflix’s chaos monkey automated software resilience testing reducing to hours or days to accomplish tasks that? previously would have required thousands of humans working for years to accomplish. Nobody lost their jobs and such tools allowed Netflix to grow their business exponentially without hiring exponentially.

I see AI in this light, I see people and firms doing things that were not imaginable before because some tasks can never scale with humans, I do not see a job apocalypse, I see a productivity bonanza with more winners than losers. I firmly believe AI will create a whole new as yet undefined segment of activity that will evetually add millions of jobs to the global economy. There will be pain, there will be winners and losers, but in the end things will even out.

The return of the Administrative Assistant

In the fall of 2022,? ChatGPT showed?the world how Gen AI can augment human outputs and streamline some aspects of the clerical work that knowledge workers are saddled with in the post-administrative assistant age.

And, for now, this is how I have come to consider and use ChatGPT as a very effective administrative assistant that takes dictation to help me draft messages, accelerate research, check my sources, etc. ChatGPT as Admin is the tip of the iceberg for AI in terms of extending human capabilities.

The impact of any technology is only ever understood in hindsight and it is seldom the utopia early advocates claim it is nor is it the hell detractors predict.?

The hype machine has spoken

The irrational hype - good and bad - that surrounds AI/ML reminds me of the NFT frenzy buoyed by mainstream media sensationalism. Reality is distorted to the benefit of shysters and investment speculators and startup “founders'? out to build the quickest exit.?

The hype surrounding AI allows business leaders to placate activist investors by capitalizing on their collective hallucination to justify layoffs to boost shareholder returns with dizzying short-term gains but no certainty of long-term value. The headline are clear:

“SAP to restructure 8,000 jobs in push towards AI, shares hit record.” (Reuters)?

“Meta spent billions to close offices and lay people off. Investors love it.” (Business Insider)?

With layoffs attributed in part to their AI/ML strategy, Meta have broken earnings records boosting their bottom line, prompting a first ever dividend, a massive stock buyback sending the stock price skyrocketing past 1 Trillion in market cap.??

The problem with this trend is that it distracts from the incredible possibilities of AI to drive prodcutivity gains. Some may lose jobs but overall the impact will benefit everybody. By cloaking layoffs with AI hype, the actual potential of AI is being subverted for short-term gain and confusing people in the process.

AI is about massively increasing productivity. Jobs may be affected BUT job loss is not the point, increasing productivity is the point.

AI made me do it...

Investors are giddy for AI justified layoffs and pressuring business leaders to fall in line with the AI hype to boost stock prices andto? proclaim? “AI made me do it.” followed by a sad face emoji.

The irrational hype - good and bad - that surrounds AI/ML reminds me of the NFT frenzy buoyed by mainstream media sensationalism. Reality is distorted to the benefit of shysters and investment speculators and startup “founders'? out to build the quickest exit.?

The problem is, nobody today can accurately predict how AI/ML will affect business or society (The Guardian). The companies who have benefited from AI/ML did so by extending people prodcutivity with deliberate AI data-driven implementations NOT firing people and hoping AI does their jobs.

Many of the claims attributed to AI/MLs magical employee redundancy powers are little more than misplaced hype and fear mongering. Meta did not let go of 25% of their people because of AI/ML, they let them go because the “Metaverse” was a costly and dismal failure and investors needed to see blood in the water to account for the losses. The operational cost windfall Meta reaped combined with a revenue upswing caused the stock market to go wild, making?it easy to blame AI and forget about Zuckerbergs' Metaverse blunder.?

Mainstream media will continue to saturate our attention with speculative claims of an AI/ML driven job apocalypse and more firms will jump on the bandwagon creating a self fulfilling prophecy of job destruction. That is not? good business.

AI/ML makes job easier and creates new ones

I have seen AI/ML at work and, like everyone else, I am in awe, but other than the certainty that corporate communications, sports statisticians and gossip columnists will be enabled to more quickly stoke an already overwhelming information tsunami, the jury is out on when, what and how many jobs will disappear, if any, and how many will be created.

I have seen good developers use ML to accelerate their code development to deliver projects more quickly - but these had been using Large Language Models (LLM) before ChatGPT shone a light on them. I have seen video editors automate out hours of tedium to focus on narrative structure and accelerate the release of their films. Yet I have seen no evidence that professionals are at risk of a job loss apocalypse, unless of course business leaders decide to let everybody go on the promise that AI will also massage their feet and make their morning coffee.

What about the "War for Talent"?

Before? fully? understanding the impact of AI/ML, companies are letting people go in the hopes AI will pick up the slack. It is more likely remaining employees will have to pick up the pace towards burnout with the help of AI/ML unless companies take a systematic approach to deploying AI. Job will be affected but how nuch and why is not 100% certain.

The “War for Talent'' may seem like a distant memory to many business leaders who seemed to have declared a "War on Talent" but the numbers are clear, despite layoffs and the efficiencies of AI/ML, it is increasingly difficult for companies to find skilled talent when they need it. Korn Ferry predicts a skills gap of 85 million jobs, (The $8.5 Trillion Talent Shortage) even if they are off by 50% that is a lot of unfilled jobs that require skilled people.

Leaders need to ignore the AI/ML hype to focus their people on embracing AI/ML for what it is, not as a job killer but as a multiplier of the capabilities that allow firms to grow exponentially while continuing the effort to hire and retain the talent they need to thrive.

People First. Now!