IBM CEO will replace 7000 workers with AI, going against the company’s own policy


Long-standing tech giant IBM is aiming to replace thousands of workers with artificial intelligence. In a recent interview, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna revealed plans to replace a third of his employees with computers.

Krishna revealed that the iconic tech giant is well aware of the ongoing emergence of artificial intelligence. Over the next five years, the IBM CEO wishes to heavily incorporate AI into the workplace.

Speaking to Bloomberg News, the CEO explained: “These non-customer-facing roles amount to roughly 26,000 workers. I could easily see 30 percent of that getting replaced by AI and automation over a five-year period.”

Currently, the tech giant employs around 260,000 people across the world, but heavy investment in AI might heavily slash those numbers. However, for now, the company wants to keep human workers for any process that involves directly affect clients or products.

The IBM CEO isn’t the only tech leader looking into replacing human workers with artificial intelligence. With the popularity of OpenAI’s ChatGPT as well as other AI chatbots, multiple companies are going to heavily invest in bringing artificial intelligence and automation into the workplace.

AI tools have already started to infiltrate every aspect of industry, albeit mostly creative ones. AI art tools such as Midjourney have been used in major video game releases and professional voice actors are already scared of being replaced with AI. Furthermore, these same tools have been used in a number of crimes, such as AI kidnapping scams.

However, it’s worth noting that IBM historically has a clever notion against replacing humans with computers. One of the company’s iconic training documents from the boom of computers claim: “a computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a management decision.”

Unfortunately, with Chinese companies already enforcing AI CEOs to take care of growth, computers are being given management decisions. While most companies won’t replace their most high-up positions with AI, the day-to-day worker will likely be replaced.

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