IBM CEO Arvind Krishna expects AI to eliminate up to 7,800 jobs at the company in the next five years. According to Krishna, up to 30 percent of current employees who have no customer contact could be replaced by AI and automation. This group currently consists of 26,000 employees.
IBM announced at the beginning of this year that it was going to say goodbye to 3,900 employees, as part of its transformation towards automation and AI. AI solutions are being used to simplify or take over the work of regular staff, and IBM offers its own AI solution for companies with IBM Watson. Watson became famous in the US when it defeated Jeopardy champions in 2011.
AI will leave its mark on the IBM staff themselves, as more complex tasks will require a human brain for even longer periods of time. Generative AI is known for being ‘trainable’: repetitive tasks are therefore a logical application of the technology. Despite the hype around AI, expectations are now less high.