The good news is that AI is hiring: The bad is it's not us

The age of artificial intelligence (AI), heralded by the 2022 advent of ChatGPT, has given birth to a peculiar form of conventional wisdom.

- RITA MCGRATH & M. MUNEER

The reigning corporate orthodoxy insists that AI shall automate menial tasks, freeing the world's brilliant and creative to do what they do best. Comforting, certainly. Is it true? Few dare to answer this with unalloyed honesty.

Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski, however, offers no such reassurance. His prognostications verge on the ruthless. Not only has he candidly enumerated the many human jobs already rendered obsolete at his company, he also foresees a near future where machines ascend to such unerring competence that they supplant most human labour—including his own. It is a vision stripped of the platitudes that executives often employ to lull their workforce into a passive stupor. Asked about AI's impact on jobs, most CEOs dispense banalities: vague paeans to 'higher-value work' mixed with words calculated for comfort employees.

Reid Hoffman, whose pronouncements rarely court controversy, maintains that AI shall not steal jobs but merely alter their nature. IBM's CEO Arvind Krishna assures us that AI is a boon, liberating workers from drudgery for loftier endeavours. But then, he also notes that one of IBM's HR functions has shrivelled from 700 employees to 50. Microsoft's Satya Nadella, similarly sanguine, envisions AI raising salaries by bestowing workers with expertise.