Despite concerns about bubbles and job losses, executives remain optimistic about AI
Cisco president says AI will help complete Cisco projects faster
Bill Gates says society needs to prepare for AI disruption
DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 23 (Reuters) – Brutal political tensions and doubts about artificial intelligence have failed to dampen Davos business leaders’ enthusiasm for technology’s ability to create jobs.
Executives at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting said jobs will be lost but new ones will be created, and two told Reuters that companies planning to cut jobs anyway would use AI as an excuse.
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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 (NVDA.O) said.opens a new tab The CEO spoke 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.
For returns
Matthew Prince, CEO of Internet security company Cloudflare (NET.N)opens a new tabIn an interview with Reuters from a restaurant in the mountains above Davos, he said 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 eviscerated 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 of IBM (IBM.N)opens a new tab The chief commercial officer said AI has reached a point where it can provide a return on investment. “You can start to truly automate tasks and business processes,” he told 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, Chief Commercial Officer, BNY (BK.N)opens a new tabsays that AI has reduced research time to onboard new customers from two days to 10 minutes.
And over the past month and a half, networking company Cisco (CSCO.O)opens a new tab Jeethu Patel, the company’s president, said in an interview that the 19-person-year task was considered too tedious, but can now be completed in a few weeks.
“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 “remain relevant” in the long run.
Number of employees (flat)
Rob Goldstein, Blackrocks (BLK.N)opens a new tab The chief operating officer told a media roundtable that the world’s largest asset manager secured nearly $700 billion in net new client assets last year and 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 (AMZN.O)opens a new tab The company is planning a second round of job cuts next week, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters, as part of a broader goal to cut about 30,000 company jobs.
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 the billionaire philanthropist and Microsoft (MSFT.O)opens a new tab Co-founder Bill Gates said the world needs to “prepare for the opportunity and disruption that AI will bring.”
“The economy will be more productive,” Gates told 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 nearly ended on Thursday with an optimistic note from SpaceX and Tesla (TSLA.O) founder Elon Musk.opens a new tab The CEO 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.
Report by Jeffrey Dustin. Additional reporting by John Revill, Dave Graham, Ariane Luthi, and Divya Chowdhury. Editing: Alexander Smith
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Jeffrey Dustin is a Reuters correspondent based in San Francisco, reporting on the technology industry and artificial intelligence. He joined Reuters in 2014, initially writing about airlines and travel in the New York bureau. Dustin graduated from Yale University with a degree in history. He was part of a team investigating Amazon.com’s lobbying efforts around the world, for which he received a 2022 SOPA Award.
