In September, the consulting firm Accenture made headlines when it acknowledged it had "exited" 11,000 employees who couldn't be retrained to adapt to AI. On a recent earnings call, CEO Julie Sweet explained the decision bluntly, saying that "the workforce needs new skills to use AI, and new talent strategies and related competencies must be developed." It's a tough-but-true reality that thanks to AI, tomorrow's jobs will look radically different than they do today.
It depends on how one defines a layoff. Microsoft Corp. ( NASDAQ: MSFT) has done it in waves, a few thousand here and a few thousand there. When one was announced, CEO Satya Nadella said, "the job cuts illustrate the enigma of success in an industry that has no franchise value." That was a vague description of artificial intelligence (AI).