As companies tackle more tasks with AI, some employees are losing their jobs. This increased use of AI also comes with another cost: money.
“You have tokens, seats, all these enterprise tools that you basically don’t budget for, and they’re expensive,” said Katya Laviolette, chief human resources officer at 1Password.
Business Insider invited Laviolette and 13 other executives to a roundtable discussion hosted by Indeed titled “The Future of the Workforce in the Age of AI.”
Others at the table agreed that as more employees experiment with AI tools, the cost of using those tools is skyrocketing. That poses a challenge for companies. Opening new paths to productivity requires experimentation. But at some point, leaders must prove that the new workflow is financially profitable.
“At some point, investors are going to say, ‘Are we going to make a profit?’ Because growing sales is another thing, but OPEX is really, really important,” Laviolette noted.
Jay Ferguson, CHRO of technology and operations at BMO Financial Group, said the solution to this problem won’t automatically lead to layoffs.
“You can reduce costs, you can give augmentations and multipliers to everyone you have,” Ferguson said. “If I looked at this table and said, ‘Okay, I’m willing to take 30% out of my business,’ I could do that. My thinking is short-term, because I still think if we can make everyone 30% more productive, we’ll win both on the revenue side and on the cost side.”
Other insights executives cited during the nearly two-hour conversation included:
It makes sense to have all employees use AI, but senior leaders need to identify the true ROI of their tools
“We found that finding the right problems for AI to solve requires a senior level in the organization,” said Kyle Trahair, managing director and partner at BCG. Lenny Poplianski
Kyle Trahair, BCG Managing Director and Partner: What we’ve seen is that there are many benefits to improving AI skills at lower levels of an organization. Employee experience tends to be better. It eliminates the monotonous aspects of work, resulting in less effort and more joy.
But what we often hear at the CFO level is, “Yes, I hear it saves all of your time.” I don’t see any change in the results. ”
We found that finding the right problems that AI could solve, ambitious enough, and with a significant P&L impact required senior levels in the organization. But you can’t do that without the AI literacy needed to understand the technology that enables this potential.
It’s not just entry-level jobs that could be threatened by AI
said Angela Alexander, Chief Human Resources Officer at ATS Corporation. Lenny Poplianski
Angella Alexander, Chief Human Resources Officer, ATS Corporation: At some point, the experience level of middle management quickly becomes irrelevant experience. The way we are used to doing things and the way we are used to thinking about things is no longer flexible enough. So we think that maybe the middle class will start to disappear. Because we need new talent coming in that has the ability to do all these amazing things and move quickly. However, this requires a completely different way of thinking about the process.
In other words, we’re not just redesigning the way we’ve always done things, we’re completely reinventing the way we do things.
More employees need a boost to start using AI
“Our CTO said, “In the afternoon, we’re going to clear everyone’s calendars and we’re all going to have Claude’s induction party,” says Olivia Chiu, Head of People Management at Wealthsimple. Lenny Poplianski
Olivia Chiu, Head of Talent Management, Wealthsimple: Our CTO said, “In the afternoon, we’re going to clear everyone’s calendars and have a Claude installation party for everyone.”
And they did that, and the purpose was, “We’re going to teach you how to use Claude, and your job is to actually solve real client problems that you see every day.”
And that in itself, when we’re all doing it at the same time, that connectivity and being able to do something in one afternoon that would have (taken) a week is change management in itself.
Small teams are growing
“(People) are building companies with much less labor,” said Sanjana Basu, partner at Radical Ventures. Lenny Poplianski
Sanjana Basu, Partner, Radical Ventures: We don’t have bloated teams of 30 people pitching to us for funding right now. We have one, 16-year-old, 20-year-old, 23-year-old player who throws to us all day, every day. And they are building companies with far less labor.
I think this is another big change that we’re going to see in the ecosystem. So people with more autonomy in government agencies will start their own companies leveraging all of these AI tools in a leaner way. And those same people will probably be hired by large companies because they can actually make a difference.