IBM could replace roughly 7,800 jobs with AI: report

International Business Machines (IBM) CEO Arvind Krishna said in a new interview with Bloomberg that the company is expecting to pause hiring for jobs that he says could be done with artificial intelligence (AI).

According to Bloomberg, Krishna said that hiring in “back-office” jobs will be slowed down in the coming year, noting that he could see 30 percent of those 26,000 jobs being replaced by AI. This means that about 7,800 of those jobs would be lost, as concerns rise about how AI’s influence could impact academic, technology and business industries.

“I could easily see 30% of that getting replaced by AI and automation over a five-year period,” he said.

Krishna said that tasks like providing employment verification letters and switching employees between departments could be fully automated. According to the report, he said that other human resources tasks like evaluating productivity would likely not be replaced by automation or AI for over the next 10 years.

He also said that the country may face a “shallow and short” recession at the end of the year after previously saying that he thought the country could avoid it at the end of last year.

IBM announced earlier this year that the company would be laying off nearly 4,000 jobs as a result of one of its branches breaking off to become its own company. The company said at the time that it is not a reflection of IBM’s financial outlook.