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The jobs market is \u201cchanging right before our eyes,\u201d the U.K. boss of Microsoft says, but not necessarily to the detriment of AI-wary workers.<\/p>\n
In the latest return in the heated debate over whether AI will be a job maker or job taker, Clare Barclay is falling on the bullish side, at least for her organization, and she has the data to prove it.<\/p>\n
Barclay, Microsoft\u2019s U.K. CEO, says the company has more vacancies advertised on LinkedIn than before the pandemic and, more importantly, before the AI boom.<\/p>\n
Speaking at Evident\u2019s AI Symposium, Barclay said this was down to a mixture of employees looking to shift roles and employers trying to find the right skills for a new age of AI-augmented work.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of people that are saying, \u2018I want to move job,\u2019 and then there\u2019s a ton of employers where the biggest thing on their mind is, \u2018I can\u2019t find enough people,\u2019\u201d Barclay said.<\/p>\n
The Microsoft exec, who has been in her role since October 2020, says she hasn\u2019t seen anything like the last year of progress in her 30 years working in tech, as funding poured into AI startups while tech giants rushed to develop large language models and other exciting software.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Concerns are growing over what this automation movement will mean for the labor market, and pessimists can point to several examples to show why.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Goldman Sachs predicts AI could automate 300 million jobs globally<\/a> by 2030. In an even more doomsday-style prediction, venture capitalist Kai-Fu Lee recently doubled down<\/a> on his 2017 forecast that AI would displace 50% of jobs by 2027.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople have criticized me for being too aggressive in 2017, 2018, 2019, and I was a little nervous at the time,\u201d the chairman and chief executive of Sinovation Ventures said at Fortune\u2019s <\/em>Innovation forum in Hong Kong in March.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cBut when gen AI came out, I think everybody\u2019s on the bandwagon and believing that is the correct pace.\u201d<\/p>\n While analysts have emphasized that transition won\u2019t happen overnight, there are already examples of businesses using AI to overhaul their labor requirements.<\/p>\n Last year, Swedish buy now, pay later pioneer Klarna said it had frozen hiring, citing the impact of AI on its operations. In an update in February, the group said its chatbot was doing the work of 700 customer service agents<\/a>.<\/p>\n Barclay, however, still sees AI as an augmenter of tasks. Speaking alongside London Stock Exchange Group CEO David Schwimmer at Evident\u2019s event, the pair detailed how AI was doing this, including acting as a briefing tool for meetings and an email organizer.<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone at work has got things that will make their work a bit easier and can help them and let them focus on the things that are a little bit more joyful,\u201d Barclay said.<\/p>\n Barclay said Microsoft co-pilot was like having a \u201creally good MBA grad\u201d working for you, and prompting it was the same as training a young upstart.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you had an MBA grad with you, you wouldn\u2019t just give them a short description [of a task]. You would actually give them a task that would be quite expansive,\u201d she says, adding Microsoft is doing more work on sharing what types of prompts are more effective for training AI.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\nSubscribe to the Fortune Next to Lead newsletter to get weekly strategies on how to make it to the corner office. Sign up for free<\/a> before it launches on June 24, 2024.<\/div>\n