AI 'taking jobs', say recruiters in UAE after Amazon layoffs

As Amazon confirmed another round of corporate job cuts this week - part of a sweeping global shift towards automation and artificial intelligence - UAE recruitment experts say the same wave is "definitely coming our way.

- Haneen Dajani [e-mail]

Some employers are taking a more ethical approach by retraining staff rather than replacing them outright as a result of AI deployment. - FILE PHOTO

Zaid Al Hiali, co-founder of Marc Ellis Consulting and Training, said what began in the US with tech giants like Amazon and Meta will soon ripple through the Gulf job market.

"This is definitely a wave that is coming our way 100 per cent," said Al Hiali. "What is happening in the US - at Amazon, for instance - started there and will pass by all of us. Technologies are being introduced, not just in operations jobs, but even tech jobs like software engineering. You can ask AI to do a full website, and it can deliver in seconds. So, many will be let go because AI is taking jobs."

Al Hiali said employees across industries must urgently "upscale" to avoid being replaced. "If you have ten administrators in one company, maybe you will only need two or three," he explained. "It's scary, really, but this is what we already see." He cited his own experience working with an AIbased "designer review" system that replaced what used to be a team of ten engineers manually reviewing technical maps. "Now we feed the maps into the system - it automatically compares them to standards and releases the comments," he said. "The work of ten engineers now gets done in a few minutes."

Digital transitions

According to Al Hiali, similar digital transitions are already happening in oil and gas, banking, and the broader tech sector. In the Gulf, he said, AI adoption is also influencing Emiratisation strategies. "Many companies struggle to meet Emiratisation targets - there aren't enough Emiratis for these jobs," he said. "Before, they would hire them for entry-level roles like call centres and gradually upgrade them. Now, these functions are being replaced by AI completely. You'll have AI agents calling customers in any accent or language - faster and cheaper than humans."