In fact, Glassdoor, a job hunting and employee review company, has cut down a total of around 1,300 jobs as its parent company, Recruit Holdings, Japan, accepts artificial intelligence.
In an email to employees Thursday, Hisayuki “Deko” Idekoba, CEO of Recruit Holdings, said “AI is changing the world,” and that the company must adapt accordingly. The layoffs represent approximately 6% of Recruit Holdings' workforce.
The cuts, like U.S. teams, are targeting corporate research and development and “people and sustainability,” but other regions and regions will also be affected. The company will send notifications to employees who are no longer in their jobs on Thursday.
The move reflects the use of AI to focus on changing how job seekers are looking for jobs and how employers handle recruitment. As part of that effort, the company will actually fold its Glassdoor operations, the company told CBS MoneyWatch. Glassdoor CEO Christian Sutherland-Wong has resigned.
“[W]We think about the HR industry, an industry that costs over $300 billion, including 60% or 65% of human labor manual costs. “It's very difficult to find a large industry with very high labor manual costs for humans, which is what we're focusing on,” Idekoba said in May at the JPMorgan Chase Technology Conference.
He added that about a third of the company's new programming code is written by AI and that he expects that number to jump in half. “It's going to be 50% soon,” he said.
Layoffs will encourage corporate leaders to promote AI capabilities, but some experts have warned that the technology could lead to unemployment. For example, Ford CEO Jim Farley, who spoke at the Aspen Idea Festival in June, said that AI is likely to replace half of all white-collar workers in the United States.
