IBM reportedly prepares to halt hiring for jobs that could soon be replaced by AI
The Yahoo Finance Live team discusses a report on IBM that the company will stop hiring for jobs that could be replaced by AI. The team also reports on how the Hollywood writers' strike is highlighting AI concerns in contract talks.
Video Transcript
- The development of AI may have big implications for workers as well. And it's already starting to impact jobs. IBM CEO Arvind Krishna saying that the company plans to pause some hiring in the coming years for jobs that could be replaced by artificial intelligence. Now, Krishna making the comments in an interview to Bloomberg on Monday, this hiring pause amounts to about 30% of IBM's non-customer facing roles over a five year period.
Akiko, when you take a look at the fact that a number of CEOs are already coming out talking about the risks, talking about the fact that AI is clearly going to impact their workforce, Goldman was out with a note pretty recently saying that they expect AI to impact about 2/3 of jobs. But on the flip side, could also potentially drive about 7% growth in global GDP over the next 10 years. So yes, some jobs will likely be eliminated as a result of AI. But it could potentially here create many new ones that we haven't exactly thought about yet.
- Yeah, I mean, you imagine for companies, it really is about improving efficiency. And we've talked a lot about technology replacing workers, at least those that are more labor intensive. Now, we're talking about jobs that are someone described as white collar, administrative jobs, secretarial jobs. That's going to make a lot of people nervous, when you hear a company like IBM saying that those jobs could be replaced. Certainly of course, it feels inevitable, given the conversation about AI over the years.
But there's another thing that we've been talking about. And Seana, it feels like there's not a day where we're not talking about another industry being disrupted. An AI could have a big impact in Hollywood now. The Writers Guild of America, including the regulation of AI in its contract demands, the fear here is that movies and TV could one day be written by AI software. Of course, the Writers Guild now agreeing to go on strike, because they couldn't reach an agreement with the studios here in Hollywood.
But here's some interesting nuggets I think to pull out from here, Seana. When you think about it, the use of AI being the big issue here, there's two stipulations. The WGA is looking for literary materials-- we're talking about screenplays, treatments-- cannot be generated by AI. It needs to be a person. And ChatGPT can't be credited with writing a screenplay. But the other thing that I think is kind of interesting here, the WGA also saying that source material-- so this is a novel or an essay that inspires a movie-- that also cannot be written by AI.
And that's kind of the area that a lot of people have been looking in since ChatGPT came out, saying that how are we going to know if a book is written by an AI? WGA saying, well that needs to be made clear, and it cannot, as part of this agreement they're looking for.
- Yeah, and I think it makes a lot of sense. We talk about the fact that this is really impacting almost every single industry. You talk about Hollywood, the impact there. It makes a lot of sense why the writers there are calling for this to be in their contract. We've already seen it affect our industry, journalism. A number of companies more and more are starting to use AI to generate some of those articles. And when you talk about the fact that it's hard to distinguish who uses AI versus who does not, when it comes to ChatGPT, teachers are having a very tough time trying to figure out whether or not students are plagiarizing-- I guess you could call it that here-- when they use ChatGPT, instead of writing their own essays.
So, it makes a heck of a lot of sense as to why these writers are calling for this to be included in their contract. We'll see whether or not they're able to get that in there.
