Yesterday Stack Overflow announced that they were laying off their staff for the second time this year. Prashanth Chandrasekar, the CEO of Stack Overflow explained these layoffs in his blog saying that the initial restructuring efforts weren’t enough and “we have made the extremely difficult decision to reduce the company’s headcount by 28%.” 

This year saw a phenomenal increase in layoffs in the tech industry. January having the most with a constant trickle throughout the year. Human resources took the major hit after which software engineers came next with 22.1% of employees laid off this year. 

In the example of Stack Overflow, there have been reports for a while now that claim users preferred ChatGPT over the 15 year old website to help with coding troubles resulting in a drastic drop in traffic. This is the first time that AI has been replaced. Microsoft’s Linkedin also announced their layoffs again yesterday, cutting down their workforce in the engineering, talent and product departments. Dukaan, an e-commerce platform, earlier this year laid off 90% of their support staff and replaced them with AI. The CEO said that their customer support resolution time went down considerably because of this. 

The layoffs for each company is a combination of multiple factors but the increased use of AI in the workplace is slowly but surely threatening to replace the human workforce. 

AI and Human Resources

True to the report published by Goldman Sachs, the majority of work that can be automated is already being done so by AI. Scaling a business now doesn’t require as much labour anymore and technology will be used as a default. “Lesser hiring means fewer recruiters. Leaner organisations point to small HR departments. Sales, marketing, legal, and accounting teams will shrink as tools become more powerful.” predicts Vin Vashishta.

“AI in HR is not new; its integration has been ongoing, and generative AI’s recent emergence globally has sparked an AI race impacting all organisations profoundly,”  Nishchae Suri, Managing Director at Cornerstone OnDemand told AIM. Cornerstone is a SaaS platform that provides a comprehensive learning and talent management solution. 

The pressure to enhance operations using AI is widespread, affecting HR as well. Currently, 81% of HR leaders have explored or adopted AI solutions, a figure likely to rise. 

Suri further added that the potential value of AI for HR is substantial, providing insights into talent performance and aligning employees with relevant learning pathways matching their progression goals. However, concerns arise with the swift acceleration of AI and its implications for employees. 

According to Cornerstone OnDemand’s latest Talent Mobility Study, 73% of employees express interest in exploring new roles within their company, and a higher percentage of them preferred using technology to explore these new roles rather than a conversation directly with the manager. So AI in human resource solutions can recommend learning opportunities, analyse career trajectories, and align key skills with organisational requirements. 

In line with this the company announced ‘Skills Playground’ a free, AI-powered tool that matches skills to job roles and learning content ontology, with more than 50,000 skills identified, and lets visitors experience AI skills detection firsthand. 

This is one of the earliest technologies that streamlines HR roles and processes using AI. IBM also continues to build their Watsonx platform adding features to automate processes like onboarding etc. 

Does AI take over jobs?

There is little to show that AI is the reason for layoffs. Right now, gig workers in content creation have seen a direct hit because it is easy to produce good quality AI generated content. 

The constant news of layoffs are rarely related to AI. The Stack Overflow layoffs were blamed on the business strain due to macroeconomic factors by its CEO. LinkedIn is likely suffering from poor recruitment – whose fees are its biggest revenue. It still remains that AI is only a tool for humans to employ to make their jobs easier rather than a threat. In the meanwhile however it is unfortunate to have the constant fluctuation in the job market. 

Upskilling with online courses and certifications and keeping in line with the industry requirements is gaining popularity with companies as well as job seekers. 

It is important to stress that AI is a helpful tool which will reduce the number of jobs that require repetition and can be automated. On the flip side, jobs for developers have increased in demand over the years. Suri sums up saying, “The nature of work might shift, and some tasks may become automated, but new opportunities will arise as well.”