A tech giant is sending a clear message — employees must learn to use artificial intelligence or lose their job.
Accenture, a consulting and tech services firm that helps companies, said it will lay off staff that don’t know how to use AI.
It’s the latest company to completely revamp its hiring strategies as computers begin to spit out work that looks like a human’s.
The company’s CEO, Julie Sweet, told investors on Thursday that as AI becomes ‘a part of everything we do.’
In the last quarter, $865 million has been utilized to retrain a workforce of 550,000, which includes severance packages for those who were let go.
The company said the investment will save $1billion. That has allowed Accenture to hire 37,000 more AI and data professionals.
‘Our early investment in AI is really paying off,’ Sweet told CNBC. ‘AI is critical to the future.’
Last week, Morgan Stanley said ‘agentic’ AI models will help companies slash nearly $1trillion from their budgets.
Julie Sweet, Accenture’s CEO, said the company is retraining employees with AI, and cutting those that don’t keep up
The massive cost savings being forecast will come from reduced headcount and the automation of repetitive or information-heavy tasks.
Overall, companies will spend less on salaries and get work done faster, Morgan Stanley predicts.
So far this year, employers have announced 800,000 job cuts across the economy— the most since the 2020 pandemic. Many of the job cuts have focused on middle-income jobs, a huge change from the job cuts from the past 30 years.
A few major CEOs have already said they’re implementing the potential job-slashing tech.
‘As we roll out more Generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done,’ Amazon’s top boss, Andy Jassy, said.
Although predicting the exact outcome is challenging, it’s anticipated that over the coming years, there will be a decrease in the total number of corporate employees.
Jim Farley, the CEO of Ford Motors, said ‘literally half of all white collar workers,’ should expect to lose their jobs.
Even Glassdoor, the online job reporting website, slashed 1,300 workers from its ranks as it turned to robots.
America has seen an explosion in job cuts this year, with AI helping contribute to the exit of middle managers
Several companies have announced office-clearing layoffs, with over 800,000 people losing their job this year
Job experts are raising red flags about how the AI shift is reshaping the entry-level job market — and what that means for recent graduates.
The initial jobs to become automated are mostly entry-level positions, typically occupied by recent high school and college graduates entering the job market.
This shift is leading to what some describe as a ‘diamond-shaped’ employment structure, characterized by fewer top executives and entry-level workers, while professionals in mid-level positions see more opportunities for advancement.
“AI is eroding the bottom tier of the corporate hierarchy, particularly in sectors where knowledge work is predominant,” said Ignacio Palomera, the CEO of Bondex, a Web3 professional platform, in a conversation with the Daily Mail.
‘The first casualties are disproportionately early-career professionals and operational generalists.’
Still, the race to implement the technology is on.
Investors have pushed Wall Street indexes to record highs, largely because of optimism about the technology.
These rapid developments have caused some analysts to feel uneasy. Many AI startups are securing substantial amounts of investment, yet they haven’t managed to become profitable.
