Employers these days are often trying to cut down on their employees. They often use vague stories of AI to license layoffs, but at least when it comes to AI, they often don't know what they're talking about.
In particular, Klarna was far above this curve, boasting about AI layoffs long before it became trendy. They were one of the first to announce major AI layoffs, and they proudly promoted them for quite some time, first realising that they were messed up.
Here we are screaming about the expected AI efficiency, considering challenges before the market before the possibility of an IPO in 2024.
And they're walking it all again, in February 2025.
They are hardly alone. For example, the person in X once told me that something similar was happening in China:
I was so amusing about Klarna's transformation that I decided to blow the entire arc away from the premature declaration of AI's ubiquitous powers to the proud announcement of the re-inhabitation of 180 people.Klarna Effect.
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This morning, inviting today's essay, I witnessed a fresh Klarna effect through a friend of a neuroscientist, This time, we'll be using an Australian bank..
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Also, my mailbox this morning had a pointer to Story by the registeraccording to Amazon AWS CEO Matt Garman, I found it interesting from an employer wise enough to resist traps.
I'm with Garman, the AWS CEO. It shoots junior employees, especially in areas such as software development. AI is a short-term play that can easily go back to biting an employer (at least for now, until the technology is very mature and reliable). AI can do at least some of the jobs junior employers can do, but in many cases, not all, AI often lacks the judgment of senior employees. If you suspend your junior employee, you risk destroying Pipeline by Expertis.
In 2016, Geoff Hinton promised that there would be no need to train radiologists. Almost ten years later, one person (as far as I know) hasn't been replaced.
These days, of course, some employers have actually experimented with replacing their employees with AI. But in many cases, I believe they underestimate what humans can do and overestimate the technical preparation of AI today. The Klarna effect may come back to trouble them.
