Many companies are racing to save money by replacing employees with machines and robots, according to a New York Times report. At least that was the sentiment at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland.
Publicly, executives have decried the negative impact artificial intelligence could have on the workforce. But during panel discussions about the technology, executives said they are racing to implement automation. They also gave the impression that they couldn’t care less about how it impacts people, the report states.
Tech executive Kai-Fu Lee, author of “AI Superpowers”believes that artificial intelligence will “eliminate 40 percent of the world’s jobs within 15 years,” the report stated. Chief executives are “under enormous pressure from shareholders and boards to maximize short-term profits, and that the rapid shift toward automation was the inevitable result,” the New York Times reported.
The report noted that: All over the world, executives are spending billions of dollars to transform their businesses into lean, digitized, highly automated operations. They crave the fat profit margins automation can deliver, and they see A.I. as a golden ticket to savings, perhaps by letting them whittle departments with thousands of workers down to just a few dozen.
Companies are also using buzzwords and euphemisms to gloss over what’s really happening. For example, workers are being “released” form mindless tasks. Employee layoffs are being cast as a “digital transformation, the report notes. – READ MORE