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United Parcel Service Inc.<\/a>\u2019s\u00a0largest layoffs<\/a>\u00a0in its 116-year history were made possible, in part, by new technologies including artificial intelligence, CEO Carol\u00a0Tom\u00e9 said last week. Citing one example, she said that machine learning allows salespeople to put together proposals without having to ask pricing experts for guidance.<\/p>\n UPS is among a growing number of companies facing an AI two-step of sorts: Showing investors how AI helps do more with less while simultaneously avoiding the fear-mongering that comes with directly linking technology with job cuts. A UPS spokesperson later said AI is not replacing workers, and that executives did not make an explicit connection between AI and the permanent layoffs on the company\u2019s earnings call.<\/p>\n BlackRock<\/a> Inc. last month said it would\u00a0dismiss about 600 employees<\/a>.\u00a0In a memo to staff, CEO Larry Fink and President Rob Kapito pointed to dramatic industry shifts \u201cand perhaps most profound, new technologies are poised to transform our industry \u2014\u00a0and every other industry.\u201d While Fink has been outspoken about his belief in\u00a0AI\u2019s potential to turbocharge productivity<\/a>, the new tech\u00a0was not cited as a reason for the cuts.\u00a0The asset manager still expects to have a larger staff by the end of the year as it expands certain parts of the business, according to the\u00a0memo.<\/p>\n Experts struggle to\u00a0get an accurate picture of just how many jobs are being eliminated as AI\u00a0rapidly advances.\u00a0Since last May, US companies have announced more than\u00a04,600 jobs cuts<\/a>\u00a0 in order to free up resources to hire people with AI experience or because the technology replaced tasks, according to\u00a0outplacement firm\u00a0Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc<\/a>. But that estimate is \u201ccertainly undercounting\u201d the true total, Senior Vice President Andrew Challenger said in an interview.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are\u00a0probably more jobs in the economy that are being cut because of AI already than are getting attributed to that or announced. Every time a company mentions it, they get headlines across every news outlet for like a month,\u201d Challenger\u00a0said. \u201cThey would rather go under the radar most of the time.\u201d<\/p>\n Last spring, International Business Machines Corp. drove headlines across the world when Chief Executive Officer Arvind Krishna told Bloomberg the company\u00a0planned to pause hiring<\/a>\u00a0it thinks it could soon replace with AI. An IBM<\/a> spokesperson said\u00a0the company does not have a hiring freeze in place and plans to keep headcount level this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n Johnny Taylor, CEO of the\u00a0Society for Human Resource Management<\/a>, agreed that many of these kinds of cuts will happen quietly.<\/p>\n \u201cIBM was a leader and was public about it, and got beaten up pretty bad,\u201d Taylor said in an interview in December. \u201cSo the rest of them have said \u2018We\u2019re not going to announce it, I\u2019m just going to do it.\u2019 We\u2019re going to reduce our headcount.\u201d<\/p>\n Many firms may do that by significantly slowing hiring, he said. \u201cWe will wake up three years from now and see much leaner organizations,\u201d he said. \u201cThey will have replaced you without making a big announcement.\u201d<\/p>\n So far, most AI-related cuts have been in the tech industry, according to Challenger\u2019s tally.\u00a0Some companies, like\u00a0homework help site Chegg<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0programmer help site\u00a0\u00a0Stack Overflow<\/a>, cut staff after their businesses were directly undercut by AI products. Other companies,\u00a0like\u00a0file-storage service Dropbox<\/a>, raced\u00a0to refocus on the new technology, letting go of staff to make way for new hires with AI skill sets.<\/p>\n After IBM, only a handful of\u00a0companies have explicitly tied AI to job cuts or hiring freezes.\u00a0<\/p>\n In December, the Swedish buy now, pay later firm Klarna Inc. said it would freeze hiring as tools like OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT cut down the time certain tasks take. \u201cWe need fewer people to do the same thing,\u201d CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski\u00a0told the Telegraph<\/a>. \u201cThe right thing for us is just to say: \u2018let\u2019s not recruit now, let\u2019s see how this plays out.\u2019\u201d A spokesperson for Klarna declined to comment further.<\/p>\n In January, language-learning software company Duolingo Inc. chose not to renew about\u00a010% of its contractors<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWe just no longer need as many people to do the type of work some of these contractors were doing. Part of that could be attributed to AI,\u201d a spokesperson told Bloomberg,\u00a0<\/strong>adding that Duolingo does not have a hiring freeze in place and is actively recruiting for a wide range of roles.\u00a0The company said no full-time employees were affected and that\u00a0the job reduction isn\u2019t a \u201cstraight replacement\u201d of workers with AI, as many of its full-time employees and contractors use the technology in their work.<\/p>\n These companies aren\u2019t\u00a0alone in their thinking, even if others don\u2019t say it out loud:\u00a0Three out of four<\/a>\u00a0Fortune 500 chief human resources officers surveyed by Gallup last year said they see AI replacing jobs in their company in the next three years.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cLet\u2019s not pretend \u2014 jobs are going to go away because of AI,\u201d said Bob Toohey, chief human resources officer\u00a0at insurer Allstate<\/a> Corp., adding that he was referring to the overall labor market, not his company specifically. \u201cThere will be jobs lost, and also jobs enhanced.\u201d<\/p>\n In his own department, Toohey said AI will change the work of the so-called learning and development teams that train Allstate employees in, say, a new method of handling claims. What once was a three-week process of creating content\u00a0can now take less than a day. \u201cWe are right in the throes of this now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n In the tech industry, some top executives have warned AI could eliminate certain jobs, with\u00a0Elon Musk going so far<\/a>\u00a0as to say, \u201cThere will come a point where no job is needed.\u201d But for the companies currently introducing AI to workers, there\u2019s often a more positive spin.<\/p>\n \u201cThe big thing you\u2019ll hear companies say is they\u2019re not focused on elimination, but augmentation \u2014\u00a0trying to make people more effective and efficient,\u201d Challenger said. \u201cBut clearly there are a lot of scenarios right now where one person could do the work of four or five people with\u00a0the help of AI in a way they couldn\u2019t a year ago. That\u2019s\u00a0playing out on the ground even if we\u2019re not hearing about it in big announcements from organizations.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\nSubscribe to the Eye on AI newsletter to stay abreast of how AI is shaping the future of business. Sign up<\/a> for free.<\/div>\n