Headline, February 05 2025/ WORKERS : ''' AI'S APOCALYPTIC AIR '''

WORKERS : 

''' AI'S APOCALYPTIC

 AIR '''

AMAZON'S ANNOUNCEMENT IN OCTOBER that it was cutting 14,000 corporate positions  included an '' alarming warning '' for those worried that the artificial intelligence apocalyptic may have arrived.

A.I. is '' enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before,'' a senior vice president wrote in a message to employees that the company shared publicly. And to realize this potential, the executive suggested, '' we're convinced that we need to be organized more leanly, with fewer layers.''

The announcement, combined with other layoff news from companies like Target, UPS, Microsoft and IBM, has prompted some to suggest that the U.S. economy has entered a period of A.I. driven restructuring.

But the A.I. apocalypse is probably not here yet, while the technology may have played an indirect role in some of the downsizing, experts say the transition to an A.I. powered workplace most likely won't entail large-scale layoff in which employers dump humans in favor of machines.

Rather, the transition is likely to be gradual, occurring as new companies, built to exploit A.I., take market share from established companies that are slower to embrace it.

'' Widespread adoption is going to happen at the new firms,'' said Mert Demirer, an economist at the  Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ''It's always the case that the smaller the production process, the more the process is easier to change.''

Among established companies, those in the tech industry appear to be furthest along in adopting  artificial intelligence.

Employers like Amazon, Microsoft and Google have made a number of A.I. tools available to their  white-collar employees, such as A.I. assistants that suggest lines of code, so-called agents that can generate whole sections of computer programs, and chatbots that can produce drafts or memos and reports.

But employees at Amazon, where the announced job cuts affected less than 5 percent of corporate workers, say the adoption of these tools has been uneven across different teams and organizations.

And thus far, the layoffs and buyouts, at big tech companies do not appear to have been driven by the automation of white-collar jobs directly.

''We do think that at some point tools will allow us enhance productivity to a point that we're going to need less labor, but we're not there yet, not in any significant way,'' said Gil Luria, an analyst who covers Microsoft and Amazon for the investment bank D.A. Davidson.

Instead, he added, the companies appear to be making the cuts partly to hold their overall profit margins steady while they spend tens of billions of dollars on A.I. infrastructure, like data centers.     

Cutting back on employees is a way to convince shareholders that the companies are ''investing in a responsible manner,'' Mr. Luria said.

Amazon said that different companies were funding their A.I. investments in different ways, and while some couldn't afford their investments, Amazon could.

The use of A.I. tools appear to be even less intensive outside technology companies. In a recent survey by McKinsey, the consulting firm, almost 80 percent of companies reported using generative A.I., but about the same number reported that the tools had not significantly affected their earnings.

The Honour and Serving of the Latest Global Operational Research on A.I., tools and the Future, continues. The World Students Society thanks Noam Scheiber.

With respectful dedication to the Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See You all prepare for the great '' Constitutional Democratic Convention,'' on !WOW! : wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter X !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011 :

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - The Voice Of The Voiceless - The Ecosystem 2011 :

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - The Voice Of The Voiceless