Google CEO Sundar Pichai said at Bloomberg’s tech conference that AI will help engineers be more productive but that his company would still add more human engineers to its team. Meanwhile, Microsoft is planning more layoffs amid heavy investment in AI, Bloomberg reported this week. Other tech leaders at Shopify, Duolingo and Box have told workers they are now required to use AI at their jobs, and some will monitor usage as part of performance reviews.
Some companies have indicated that AI could slow hiring. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff recently called Amodei’s prognosis “alarmist” on an earnings call, but on the same call chief operating and financial officer Robin Washington said that an AI agent has helped to reduce hiring needs and bring $50 million in savings.
Despite corporate leaders’ warnings, economists don’t yet see broad signs that AI is driving humans out of work. “We have little evidence of layoffs so far,” said Columbia Business School professor Laura Veldkamp, whose research explores how companies’ use of AI affects the economy. “What I’d look for are new entrants with an AI-intensive business model, entering and putting the existing firms out of business.”
Some researchers suggest there is evidence AI is playing a role in the drop in openings for some specific jobs, like computer programming, where AI tools that generate code have become standard. Google’s Pichai said last year that more than a quarter of new code at the company was initially suggested by AI.
Many other workers are increasingly turning to AI tools, for everything from creating marketing campaigns to helping with research — with or without company guidance. The percentage of American employees who use AI daily has doubled in the last year to 8 percent, according to a Gallup poll released this week. Those using it at least a few times a week jumped from 12 percent to 19 percent.
Some AI researchers say the poll may not actually reflect the total number of workers using AI as many may use it without disclosing it. “I would suspect the numbers are actually higher,” said Ethan Mollick, co-director of Wharton School of Business’ generative AI Labs, because some workers avoid disclosing AI usage, worried they would be seen as less capable or breaching corporate policy. Only 30 percent of respondents to the Gallup survey said that their company had general guidelines or formal policies for using AI.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT, one of the most popular chatbots, has more than 500 million weekly users around the
globe, the company has said. It is still unclear what benefits companies are reaping from employees’ use of AI, said Arvind Karunakaran, a faculty member of Stanford University’s Center for Work, Technology, and Organization. “Usage does not necessarily translate into value,” he said. “Is it just increasing productivity in terms of people doing the same task quicker or are people now doing more high value tasks as a result?”
Lynda Gratton, a professor at London Business School, said predictions of huge productivity gains from AI
remain unproven. “Right now, the technology companies are predicting there will be a 30% productivity gain. We haven’t yet experienced that, and it’s not clear if that gain would come from cost reduction … or because humans are more productive.”
The pace of AI adoption is expected to accelerate even further if more companies use advanced tools such as AI agents and they deliver on their promise of automating work, Mollick said. AI labs are hoping to prove their agents are reliable within the next year or so, which will be a bigger disrupter to jobs, he said.
While the debate continues over whether AI will eliminate or create jobs, Mollick said “the truth is probably somewhere in between. ”A wave of disruption is going to happen,” he said.
