Brutal political tensions and skepticism about artificial intelligence have not dampened Davos business leaders’ enthusiasm for technology’s ability to create jobs.
Jobs will be lost, but new jobs will be created, executives said at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting. Reuters In any case, companies planning to cut staff will likely use AI as an excuse.
Bearers of AI’s multitrillion-dollar expansion, including chip industry giant Jensen Huang, say the technology will lead to higher wages and job growth for plumbers, electricians and steel workers.
“Energy is creating jobs. The chip industry is creating jobs. The infrastructure layer is creating jobs,” NVIDIA’s CEO said at a meeting in a Swiss mountain resort.
“Work, work, work,” Huang added.
The optimism was in contrast to the potential trade dispute that echoed through Davos until US President Donald Trump cut tariffs and struck a deal to avoid a security divide with Europe over Greenland.
However, skepticism about AI smoldered beneath the surface.
Participants discussed how chatbots could lead to mental illness and suicide in consumers, while union leaders questioned the cost of recent technological advances.
“AI is being touted as a productivity tool, but that often means getting more done with fewer workers,” said Christy Hoffman, general secretary of the 20 million-member UNI Global Union.
towards the return
Matthew Prince, CEO of internet security company Cloudflare, told Reuters in an interview at a restaurant in the mountains above Davos that AI will continue to advance and that unscrupulous developers will be able to overcome the market and funding crash.
Prince, who said he would stick to six-minute meetings on chairlifts rather than windowless conference rooms at Davos, warned that AI could become so dominant in the future that small businesses could be eradicated while autonomous agents respond to consumer shopping requests.
In recent years, companies have been wondering how to move beyond their ill-fated AI pilots and take advantage of the AI boom started by ChatGPT in 2022.
Rob Thomas, IBM’s chief commercial officer, said AI has reached a point where there is a potential return on investment. “You can really start automating tasks and business processes,” he said. Reuters.
However, PwC said that only one in eight CEOs surveyed by the advisory firm recently believed that AI is reducing costs and delivering elusive returns. And questions remain about what business models can offset the huge costs of AI.
Cathinka Wahlstrom, BNY’s chief commercial officer, said AI has reduced research time for onboarding new customers from two days to 10 minutes.
And over the past month and a half, a project that networking company Cisco thought would require 19 man-years of work and be too cumbersome to get started is being completed in a matter of weeks, company president Jeethu Patel said in an interview.
“The way we actually write code has been reimagined,” Patel said, adding that software developers need to embrace AI not just for productivity, but to “be meaningful” in the long run.
Number of employees flat
BlackRock Chief Operating Officer Rob Goldstein told a media roundtable that the world’s largest asset manager, which secured nearly US$700 billion ($1.01 trillion) in net new client assets last year, sees AI as a way to expand its business rather than cut staff.
“We are very focused on keeping our employee count flat as we continue to grow,” Goldstein said.
Meanwhile, Amazon.com is planning a second round of layoffs next week as part of a broader goal to cut about 30,000 company jobs, two people familiar with the matter said. Reuters.
Luc Triangle, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation, said one reason why job insecurity persists despite company guarantees is that workers have little say in the introduction of AI.
In such situations, he said, workers view AI as a “threat.”
For billionaire philanthropist and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, the world needs to “prepare for the opportunity and disruption that AI will bring.”
“The economy will become more productive,” Gates said. Reuters. “That’s usually a good thing.”
Gates cited taxing AI activity as one potential idea to help workers and called on politicians to become more familiar with the technology.
“There are certainly problems, but they are all solvable problems,” Gates added about AI more generally.
Davos largely ended late last week with an optimistic note from SpaceX founder and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Musk talked about his goal of protecting civilization and making it happen between planets.
“When you think about your quality of life, it’s actually better to be an optimist and wrong than to be a pessimist and right,” Musk told the packed chamber before being led out through the kitchen to avoid waiting reporters.
