Let’s add hard data to the argument that AI will replace humans in the workplace.
Challenger Gray & Christmas, a global outplacement and business and executive coaching firm, reported in its May 2023 employment survey that 3,900 jobs have been lost to artificial intelligence. This is the first time the research agency has cited artificial intelligence as a reason for layoffs.
Artificial intelligence ranks seventh as a reason for headcount reductions, followed by:
- Finished: 19,598
- Market/economic conditions: 14,617
- No reason: 12,914
- Cost savings: 8,392
- Voluntary retirement/share buyback: 8,000
- Restructuring 5,215 people
This comes months after Resume Builder, a career site for building resumes, published the survey. The results show that nearly half of the companies using OpenAI’s generated AI chatbot ChatGPT said ChatGPT has replaced their workers. The survey of 1,000 U.S. business leaders found that 48% of respondents said their companies had replaced their workforce with ChatGPT since OpenAI’s generative artificial intelligence chatbot debuted in November. I knew there was
Rising Employment Reduces Standards in the U.S.
The news of AI-related job cuts comes amid a surge in job cuts in the United States. U.S.-based employers announced 80,089 job cuts in May, up 20% from the 66,995 job cuts announced a month earlier, according to a report by Challenger Gray and Christmas. This is 287% higher than the 20,712 job cuts announced in the same month of 2022, with companies announcing plans to cut 417,500 jobs so far this year, compared with 100,694 announced in the same period last year. That’s a 315% increase compared to downsizing. This is the highest January-May total since 2020, which recorded 1,414,828 cuts. Excluding 2020, this is the highest total in the first five months of the year since 2009, when 822,282 cuts were recorded through May.
Another sign that AI is permeating the workplace and stealing jobs: The tech sector announced 22,887 cuts in May, with the largest total of 136,831 cuts this year. A 2,939% increase from the 4,503 reductions announced in the same period last year. The tech sector announced the largest number of job cuts for the entire year since 2001, when 168,395 cuts were announced.
“Consumer confidence has fallen to its lowest level in six months and job openings are flat. Companies appear to be putting the brakes on hiring in anticipation of an economic slowdown,” said labor expert Challenger Gray. Andrew Challenger, senior vice president of And Christmas, said in a statement.
Related article: ChatGPT and Generative AI: Just Another Tool in the Creative Toolchest?
Is it safe to work in Marketing, Customer Experience?
So the question as a marketer or customer experience leader is, “How do I keep my job safe?” How can I prove that I can do the task better than ChatGPT alone? Or how can I prove it can do the job? and Are you still using these kinds of tools to support your marketing campaigns, customer loyalty programs, and all your other marketing and CX business initiatives?
First, in the world of generative AI, it’s good to know which jobs are most likely to be lost to your text writing, data analysis, photography, and creative friends.
According to Business Insider, the jobs most at risk of being replaced by AI are:
- Technical jobs (coders, computer programmers, software engineers, data analysts)
- Media-related jobs (advertising, content creation, technical writing, journalism)
- Legal industry jobs (paralegal, legal assistant)
- market research analyst
- teacher
- Finance-related jobs (Financial Analyst, Personal Financial Advisor)
- trader
- graphic designer
- accountant
- customer service agent
There’s certainly enough gas here to fuel the anxiety of marketers and customer experience leaders. And this is not the only list of this kind.
Please note that these are prediction lists. The Challenger, Grey, and Christmas data represent real jobs lost to AI, with the 3,900 figure being just over a handful.
Marketers expect to work with marketing AI
What does all of this mean for the future of marketing and customer experience work? First, it’s too early to say. Hard data about marketing and CX jobs and the impact of AI is still out there.
Moreover, it’s not all hopeless and bleak. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released its own monthly employment report on June 2, which said the U.S. created 339,000 jobs in May, well above Wall Street analyst expectations. reported.
And there are signs that companies are adopting AI and supporting work environments where AI can work in partnership with marketers.
Here are some examples.
- Senior Director of Marketing, Artificial Intelligence. Last week, Intel posted a job listing for “Senior Director of Marketing, Artificial Intelligence.” It calls for “deep experience with AI and the ability to collaborate effectively within large matrix organizations. I will be responsible for overseeing all AI marketing activities, including marketing.”
- Email marketing specialist with AI expertise. Upwork announced a job description last week that includes the following competencies:
- Leverage AI tools, especially ChatGPT, to create personalized and engaging email content
- Create email templates and prompts for use with GPT
- Leveraging AI to automate email campaigns
- AI Senior Product Manager. Coca-Cola has posted a job listing for an AI Senior Product Manager, “a key contributor and influential role for its Human Insights and Marketing Performance (HI+MP) global team.” Responsibilities include:
- Oversee the development of AI-powered research tools and protocols
- Identifying user needs, defining product requirements and managing the development process
- Development and launch of new tools and protocol products utilizing AI technology
Related article: Will AI chatbots make programmers obsolete?
Customer Experience Professionals Expect CX AI Jobs
Customer experience leaders have reason to look forward to it too. First, a Gartner poll released last month found that 38% of his respondents believe that customer experience/retention is the primary focus of their investments in generative AI. It ranked first, ahead of increased revenue (26%), cost optimization (17%) and business continuity (7%).
You need customer experience experts to lead these investments and pursue CX benefits. And while customer service made a risky list from Business Insider we previously shared, there are signs the company is investing in hiring an AI-powered customer experience leader.
For example, take a look at some of the following titles in recent job ads:
- Customer Engineer, AI/ML, Generative AI, Google Cloud. Google identifies and evaluates artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), or generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) opportunities for customers to differentiate Google Cloud to customers and uncover the cloud. We are looking for someone to work with our technical sales team as a subject matter expert. Solutions for recommending, planning, and addressing core market opportunities and use cases.
- Senior AI/ML Special Solutions Architect at AWS. This customer-facing position is designed to enable large-scale customer use cases, design ML pipelines, and accelerate adoption of AWS for AI/ML platforms. In this position, she will provide guidance on customer engagement and develop whitepapers, blogs, reference implementations, and presentations to help customers get the most out of her AI/ML on her AWS.
- GotIt! Head of Conversational AI Product for Customer Service This AI provider establishes product requirements and roadmaps through product leaders working with customers, executives, sales/CX, marketing, R&D, design, and engineering teams to create cross-functional and diverse global product and engineering Leading teams to ship complex and advanced NLP products, working on strategic relationships with strategic distribution partners alongside sales and business development, and coordinating work streams across products, R&D and solutions. take the lead
And let’s not forget the marketing and customer experience jobs available in the growing market of artificial intelligence. The global retail market for artificial intelligence ($6.37 billion in 2022) is projected to reach $48.64 billion by 2032, according to a new report from Extrapolate.
And many still expect marketing jobs to remain intact despite the lightning-fast development of AI over the past six months.
“Those who work in the field of digital marketing know that the field relies on the elements of imagination, creativity and originality when it comes to finding ways to improve communication with clients,” says Sohrab. P. wrote in a February LinkedIn post. “Similarly, digital marketing needs a human touch. It needs storytelling and emotion, but those two aspects are what AI can learn in the ways it needs to be effective today. I can not do.”
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