We have been hearing for years that artificial intelligence was going to transform the labor market as we know it. Apparently, companies that bet heavily on automation would gain productivity, save costs and leave the competition behind. And yes, many technology companies they have taken that path: dismiss employees to finance your leap into AI.
A new report from the consulting firm Gartner has just poured cold water on that strategy. The research, based on surveys of managers of large organizations with income exceeding $1 billion annually, reveals that staff cuts They are not producing the economic benefits that many expected. The most striking thing is that the figures are practically the same among the companies that They fire and those who don’t.
Gartner numbers. The consulting firm found that around 80% of large companies that are implementing autonomous AI technologies have reduced their workforce to a greater or lesser extent. As and as highlighted Fortunethese personnel cuts in some cases affected up to 20% of employees.
However, when analysts looked at who was obtaining better economic results, the data indicated that there was no appreciable difference in the return on investment of those companies that had laid off a good part of their workers and those that had kept them on staff. As Helen Poitevin, distinguished vice president and analyst at Gartner, noted, “There is no connection or correlation between those achieving ROI and layoffs.”
The substitution fallacy. According to the authors of the report, the logic that has dictated the strategy of many technology companies is that, if AI can do the work that was previously done by a human, dispensing with that human will reduce costs, and that savings automatically becomes profit. The problem is that this equation is not being fulfilled.
Gartner notes that companies that opted for workforce cuts to use AI ended up at the same point as those that did not. Poitevin warned that this approach could be “very damaging in a broader sense,” noting that some organizations that cut staff were forced to rehire employees shortly after.
Amplify people, not replace them. Gartner data revealed that the companies that are achieving the best results are those that They don’t use AI to replace peoplebut rather they incorporate AI into production processes so that their employees perform more. In fact, one of the risks posed by the strategy of replacing personnel with AI is that the company stops investing in the medium term in improving its operations and loses productive capacity.
The report notes that companies that use AI as a co-pilot for their workers tend to invest in training programs, create new roles to oversee the implementation of AI and redesign workflows, making their employees increasingly autonomous and productive.
The future of work: transformation, not apocalypse. Gartner projects that by 2029 the number of jobs created thanks to AI will exceed those lost, thus coinciding with other previous analyzes such as that of the World Economic Fundwhich point towards a shift in labor profiles, not towards a balance of net job destruction.
Between 2023 and 2029, approximately 6 million jobs will be automated worldwide, a small proportion of the nearly 2 billion jobs available globally. Still, the impact of AI is real. Gartner estimates that about 32 million workers a year will see their jobs automated. The author of the report assured that AI “is not causing a workplace apocalypse, but it is unleashing chaos and changing the way people work.”
Image | Unsplash (Raj Rana)
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