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Corporate leaders can’t “bulls—” their employees about the impact of artificial intelligence on the workforce and the ways the technology will affect jobs more broadly, according to a tech billionaire.
Jim Cavanaugh, CEO of Worldwide Technology (WWT), told CNBC that people are “too smart” to accept that AI will not change the way they manage their work and that no jobs will be eliminated. because of its transformative nature technology.
WWT is a business technology solutions provider focusing on services such as cloud computing, IT security, data analytics, artificial intelligence and consulting.
“If you think you’re going to try to play it off and tell employees that nothing’s going to change and everything’s going to be fine, that’s just BS,” Kavanaugh said in an interview last week.
Kavanaugh noted that while there is no playbook on how business leaders should communicate disruptive macroeconomic events such as the Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on jobs, a CEO’s job is “to be as clear as possible transparent and always honest with employees about where they are.”
With artificial intelligence, “there’s going to be all kinds of changes,” Kavanaugh added. “If I could give any advice, it’s that everyone should be a student of AI and technology and not be afraid of it.”
Although a given AI will affect the workforce, “none of us have it all figured out,” he said. “If someone comes and says, ‘I can tell you exactly how this is going to affect jobs and how it’s going to affect everything we do,’ they’re lying. Because nobody knows.”
Cavanaugh emphasized that, overall, he is optimistic about the positive effects of artificial intelligence and its ability to improve productivity.
“To sit there and say, ‘I’m going to try to throw cold water on this fire, I’m going to try to put it out and ignore it,’ that’s completely wrong.”
“I believe in the hug [AI] and learn and be realistic about it. Because there will be jobs that will be disrupted, it’s out of the question. But, for the most part, I really think it’s going to be an amplifier and an accelerator of what we’re all doing,” Kavanaugh told CNBC.
Kavanaugh co-founded WWT in 1990 with fellow entrepreneur David Steward from St. Louis, Missouri as a technology equipment reseller. Today, WWT is a tech giant in its own right, generating $20 billion in annual revenue.
Kavanaugh currently has a net worth of $7 billion, according to real-time data from Forbes business news magazine. Prior to co-founding the company, Cavanaugh represented the US national soccer team at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
Is artificial intelligence destroying jobs or creating jobs?
The paper further noted that, in the US and Europe, “about two-thirds of current jobs are exposed to some degree of AI automation,” while genetic AI “could replace up to a quarter of current work.”
Cavanaugh isn’t the only one who sees positive results coming from the use of artificial intelligence in the world of work. Clara Shih, head of artificial intelligence at Salesforce, told CNBC that there are jobs that will disappear due to the disruptive impact of technology.
Whether new technology will replace jobs is “an age-old question,” Shih said, citing the creation of automation tools in factories, farm vehicles and machinery, and the Internet as examples.
“There is a subset of jobs that are going to go,” Shih said. “The Internet destroyed a lot of jobs. But then it created brand new ones that we couldn’t even imagine in 1999.”
Ultimately, AI will be a positive force in the world of work, leading to new jobs, according to Shih. However, the appearance of our job descriptions may change.
“I think what we’re seeing today with AI is that everybody needs a new job description,” Shih said. “Most jobs are not going to disappear, but every job will require a new job description.”
Last week, at its annual Dreamforce event, Salesforce unveiled a new AI platform called AgentForce. Companies can use the platform to create and customize their own AI “agents,” autonomous digital workers that can help with things like customer service and employee support.
Some companies are even actively touting the benefits of AI in reducing their overall staffing needs. For example, Swedish fintech company Klarna said last month that it was in position reduced its workforce from 5,000 to 3,800 within a year thanks to artificial intelligenceand then pay its remaining workers more.
The “buy now, pay later” pioneer told the BBC it is looking to further reduce its workforce next year, to 2,000 people, through the use of artificial intelligence in areas such as marketing and customer service.
