#workforce-automation

#workforce-automation

Artificial intelligence has upended this relationship, decoupling a company's potential productivity from its headcount and redefining which businesses will fare best. As a result, America's mid-sized companies are disappearing: the number of businesses with between 250 and 499 employees has fallen by 22.5% since 2020.

The American Customer Satisfaction Survey rates hundreds of companies in dozens of categories. In its latest study, the Retail and Consumer Shipping Study 2026, Amazon.com Inc. ( NASDAQ: AMZN) topped the Online Retailer category. In all the studies, regardless of category, companies receive ratings of zero to 100. This latest study is based on 31,293 completed surveys. Customers were chosen at random and contacted via email between January and December 2025.

companies reduce staff through automating routine work while still struggling to hire AI specialists, despite a surge in client demand for AI. "Top five Indian IT firms added only 17 net employees in the first nine months of FY26 versus 17,764 in the same period last year," said Chirag Mehta, vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research. "That is what AI-era productivity looks like in practice: more output per employee, fewer benches, and tighter utilization."

While many assume formal learning is limited to a bachelor's or master's degree, both the CEO of VC firm General Catalyst, Hemant Taneja, and McKinsey's top executive, Bob Sternfels, say that's not the case anymore. Employees must skill and re-skill constantly to stay afloat, said Taneja, whose VC firm has invested in companies such as Anduril and Anthropic. Taneja discussed this during a live taping of the All-In podcast, hosted by entrepreneur and investor Jason Calacanis Tuesday at CES 2026,

Today, agentic AI can help computers take action. But that technology will manifest in the physical world through data from cameras, sensors, lidar, and other data-gathering instruments. "Physical AI perceives the world, reasons about its environment, and outputs actions," Briski said. With physical AI, Nvidia envisions the inclusion of AI in robotics, machines, autonomous vehicles, and physical devices. "The modern factory is robotic, with humans and robots working alongside each other. Robots will do the dangerous jobs, and workers will do the skilled jobs,"

Krafton, the company behind games such as PUBG: Battlegrounds and the Sims-like InZOI, is making a big push into using AI within the company. Under this new "AI First" strategy, Krafton plans to use agentic AI to help automate work and implement an "AI-cenetered" management system, according to a translation of a press release. The company also plans to spend more than 100 billion Korean won, a figure that equates to nearly $70 million, to build a GPU cluster.

It's a nervy time to be a frontline worker in a call center or back-office hub. Startups are advertising 'AI employees' and the likes of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz are talking of AI ' productizing and unbundling ' the business process outsourcing (BPO) sector that executes the core functions of corporations around the globe. No doubt customer service, HR, and IT workers in the industry are wondering how their employers will respond-and whether their livelihoods are at risk.

AI agents that will take actions for humans,

All those highly-paid suits are at risk as AI agents, AI models designed to autonomously carry out certain tasks, promise to do what they do with instant results - and without six-figure salary demands.