AI is great at one thing: Driving next waves of layoffs

ChatGPT, how many thousands of people should I replace today?

Register Kettle If there's one thing AI software seems to be good at right now, it's helping executives justify huge layoffs.

If it's not IBM saying up to 30 percent of its back-office jobs – around 7,800 roles – could be replaced by machine-learning tools, as well as offering the technology to facilitate that sort of thing at other organizations, it's telecoms giant BT ditching 55,000 workers and embracing generative AI. There are plenty of similar examples. As The Next Platform put it, AI is coming in through your front door to get to your back office.

And that's on top of chatty AI being infused into everything, from Microsoft Office apps and Google's empire to Cloudflare's developer cloud.

Are you knowingly or unknowingly training the AI that will replace you? Why are some corporations dashing to dump workers for chatbots? Does the technology even work? It's funny how there isn't a ChatCFO. What lies next, and what will machine learning bring to your organization? We tackle this in our latest Register Kettle podcast, below.

Clockwise from top left in the thumbnail, we have Chris Williams, Tobias Mann, Thomas Claburn, and regular host Iain Thomson.

It's not all doom and gloom. Some AI tech is impressive, though some systems just screw up or are used for the wrong tasks. These are very early days. Models are improving; the situation can't be ignored. ®