(Yahoo! Finance) - Three years ago, I was more upbeat about artificial intelligence from a job-creation perspective.
As of today, I officially declare any remaining optimism on that front dead.
The more leaders I talk to about how they are deploying AI, the more I'm left with a sense of dread for America's workforce. Sure, the best and the brightest will use new AI tools and drive massive productivity gains. But what happens to everyone else who's just a solid worker? Or an older worker who can't suddenly pick up AI workflows?
I can tell you what happens: They get to spend a year searching for a job or opting for a career switch to drive for Uber (UBER). Though even that job appears at risk, given how Uber is keen on rolling out Rivian (RIVN) robotaxis to compete against Tesla robotaxis.
"I think by 2027 the scrutiny on operating expenses from Wall Street is going to be super-intense, probably by the back half of this year ... because you're going to be able to figure out which organizations are optimizing on using this technology or not," Circle (CRCL) co-founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire said Tuesday night at the Economic Club of New York. "I do think it will impact the labor market in the near term."
The impact is already evident in massive layoffs at Block (XYZ), Amazon (AMZN), and likely soon at Meta (META).
Companies across five sectors that Morgan Stanley deems most likely to experience significant near-term impacts from AI adoption reported a 4% net reduction in jobs, according to a new survey of employers.
The number of roles eliminated and not replaced was highest among early-career employees, or those with no previous experience.
Here are some conversations I had on the AI front this week.
Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire
"I think the first is that agentic AI in particular is going to enable dramatically higher velocity of economic activity, and it will allow for dramatically more efficient forms of corporations ... My own belief is that, on an absolute basis in terms of productivity in the economy, GDP growth across every major industry can be transformed and grown in very, very significant ways.
"Effectively, AI agents will replace a huge percentage of work that's currently performed by humans on a massive scale. And I think it's going to be most dramatic in white-collar work. This is the message that I give to every single employee in my company: If you actually embrace these agentic capabilities, you as a person have new superpowers, and your ability to have impact grows dramatically..."
IBM vice chairman Gary Cohn
"I think displaced workers will be retrained, and they'll get other jobs. They were talking about things like this when the horse and buggy went out, when the internal combustion engine came in. There's always this natural reaction that it's going to be horrible, it's going to be bad, it's going to be the end of civilization ... And you know what? Different could be a lot better if the economy grows dramatically. You know, we are going to need a lot more service people. You still can't use an AI machine to fix my sink, fix my lights.
"Try and get a plumber in the city, try to get a plumber anywhere in the country, try and get a carpenter, try and get an electrician ... And think of all the building we're doing of data centers. Think of all the building we're doing of power facilities. They're not going to be built by machines. They're going to be built by human hands. We're going to need hands that are trained."
HP Inc. board member Songyee Yoon
"I think there'll be a lot of interesting new jobs and new areas that will need the level of human attention and talent and intelligence. However, the transition is not easy. It doesn't happen automatically. And as a society, we have to really pay attention to how we can upskill the workforce."
Edward Jones CEO Penny Pennington
"There is automation opportunity, maybe not for all of a job, but for tasks associated with the job. There's augmentation opportunity. And then there's the addition opportunity. So our opportunity is to be better at being human. The creativity, the judgment, the ethics, the integrity, the discernment, the taste that comes from the application of human skills. That's what we as leaders have got to be focused on."
By Brian Sozzi - Executive Editor
