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The CEO of US car manufacturer Ford has warned that AI technologies present a major danger to a large portion of American workers.
Speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival late last month, Ford CEO Jim Farley said that while AI will majorly benefit the US economy and population, white-collar workers are set to be left behind.
“AI is going to replace literally half of all white-collar workers,” he said.
“I believe that AI and new technology have an asymmetric impact on our economy. That means a lot of things are helped a lot, and a lot of things are hurt.”
“And when you look at these openings in our economy, it is very clear that a lot of technology we’ve seen has left a lot of people behind.
“AI will leave a lot of white-collar people behind. And we have to acknowledge that these new technologies are great, they’ll make a lot of people’s lives better, even people in the essential economy, but what are we going to do as a society for the people that it leaves behind, who are valuable humans?
“We have to have a plan for sustainment. And we don’t have that plan today.”
While a number of tech CEOs have repeatedly stated that AI will not replace workers, but change jobs, Farley’s belief that white-collar workers will be replaced by AI is not a new one.
The CEO of AI lab Anthropic, Dario Amodei, believes that US unemployment could reach 20 per cent by 2030 as a result of AI.
“AI is starting to get better than humans at almost all intellectual tasks, and we’re going to collectively, as a society, grapple with it,” Amodei told CNN.
LinkedIn chief economic opportunity officer Aneesh Raman said that AI will be a major threat to students graduating in 2025, while International Monetary Fund (IMF) managing director Kristalina Georgieva believes that 40 per cent of jobs worldwide and 60 per cent in advanced economies would be impacted by AI.
Last week, Microsoft said it was firing 10,000 staff at a time when AI seems to be its main focus.
“We continue to implement organisational changes necessary to best position the company and teams for success in a dynamic marketplace,” a company spokesperson told media.
Microsoft’s decision to let go of thousands of staff is part of a trend within the technology sector, which is reversing the expansion it saw during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The staff cuts are understood to affect a number of teams and countries across Microsoft’s operations, with the Xbox and gaming division being hit particularly hard.
In regards to its AI expansion, the company said in January that it projected an US$80 billion AI data centre spend for the 2025 fiscal year and announced a US$400 million investment in AI in Switzerland in June.
The company’s CEO, Satya Nadella, also said it would look at lowering its AI data centre building costs.
“We continue to optimise and drive efficiencies across every layer, from data centre design to hardware in silicon to system software to model optimisation,” Nadella said.
“All towards lowering costs and increasing performance.”
However, its investment in AI is delivering results. The company’s Azure Cloud AI is reportedly set to deliver 33 per cent annual growth through 2028, up from a 27 per cent estimate. This could lead to US$200 billion in revenue.
By 2032, fourteen to 16 per cent of all technology spending will be on generative AI, equating to US$1.8 trillion, according to intelligence analysts at Bloomberg.
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