Roundup: Employers Duck AI’s Impact on Customer Demand
You’re embracing automation. Your customers are, too.
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News & Notes
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff says between 30% and 50% of his company’s work is now done by AI. Whether or not that’s true is an open question, Business Insider notes. “Benioff is a sales guy who loves big events, big buildings and big claims, so you might expect there could be some exaggeration going on here,” the website said.
Salesforce has about 76,000 employees. So the real question, said BI, is what do 38,000 of those people do all day if AI’s performing their work? Are massive layoffs on the horizon?
Though it doesn’t claim to know, BI points out that if companies like Salesforce are automating so much of their work, their customers are probably doing the same thing. That suggests they’ll need to buy fewer products and services.
As we’ve noted in the past, a swath of experts believe AI will lead to major disruptions of the workforce. At the same time, business leaders increasingly talk about efficiency while the idea of maintaining headcount has fallen out of fashion. In addition to technology, the business climate, transformation to new energy sources and other macroeconomic factors are pressuring jobs.
According to a 2023 report from the World Economic Forum, 83 million jobs will be eliminated over the next five years, while only 69 million will be created. That’s a net loss of 14 million jobs, or 2% of current employment.
Such numbers are only estimates, some authorities say. “All firm predictions should be taken with a very large pinch of salt,” Torsten Bell, CEO of the UK think tank the Resolution Foundation, told the BBC. “We do not know how [AI] will evolve or how firms will integrate it into how they work.”
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What do Columbus and ChatGPT Have in Common?
The quest to develop something like human intelligence in AI is leading companies to spend billions of dollars, said the New York Times. Tech companies are investing in data centers and paying huge signing bonuses to AI experts. Meanwhile, venture capitalists put $65 billion into AI during 2025’s first quarter, a 33% jump from the end of 2024, and a crazy 550% more from the quarter before ChatGPT was launched.
Many of those dollars are being spent on data centers. This year alone, Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft will spend an estimated $320 billion on infrastructure. Even if the development of AI slows down, Amazon said, its new data centers will be busy providing AI services and systems to customers.
Executives worry that’s not enough. “The thinking from the big CEOs is that they can’t afford to be wrong by doing too little, but they can afford to be wrong by doing too much,” Radical Ventures Partner Jordan Jacobs told the Times.
Investments are no longer focused on general AI products from the likes of OpenAI and Google, the Times said. Instead, they’re aimed at narrower solutions that use AI for job interviews or summarizing doctors’ appointments. However the investments turn out, many business leaders believe their money’s being well-spent.
“Christopher Columbus thought he was headed to the Orient, and he ended up in the Caribbean,” observed Chris V. Nicholson, an investor with VC firm Page One Ventures. “He did not get to where he thought he was going, but he still got to a place that was highly valuable.”
Customer Service Discovers the Value of Humans
A consumer backlash and concerns about quality are forcing a number of companies to backtrack on their plans to fully automate customer service. According to Gartner, half of the companies that planned “significant” personnel cuts in customer service have changed their minds.
Nearly all customer service and support leaders polled by Gartner, 95%, said they’ll retain many human workers and involve them in determining AI’s role in their work. “This approach ensures a ‘digital first, but not digital only’ strategy, avoiding the pitfalls of a hasty transition to an agentless model,” Gartner said.
“While AI offers significant potential to transform customer service, it is not a panacea,” said Kathy Ross, Senior Director Analyst at Gartner’s Customer Service & Support practice. “The human touch remains irreplaceable in many interactions, and organizations must balance technology with human empathy and understanding.”
Even Sebastian Siemiatkowski, the CEO of Klarna who famously predicted the dominant role AI would play in business at the expense of people, has become less vocal on the subject. He sees AI and people working together as being a rule, not an exception. Eventually, he imagines, customer service will come in two tiers, one without charge to those willing to deal with an AI customer service agent, the other paid for those who want a human rep.
Some 40% of those polled by analytics platform Quantum Metric said they’d pay for human contact over self-service, while 54% believe complaints or questions can only be properly resolved by speaking to a person.
Other News
AI Needs People
More than 90% of business leaders and professionals surveyed by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services say having the right talent is critical if AI is to be implemented and used successfully. At the same time, 72% believe AI has exacerbated technical skills gaps, and only 21% report their HR leadership is closely involved in shaping their company’s AI strategies. Fifty-two percent said insufficient expertise was the top challenge preventing HR from playing a role in AI strategy, and many are struggling to create sustainable pipelines for AI-related talent. The research was sponsored by Eightfold AI. [PRN]
AI Assistants Boost Learning Performance
Courses that integrate an AI assistant saw a 15% increase in median grades and a double increase in the number of completed courses, according to the American Society of Engineering Education. Assistants that could explain a learner’s errors were the most widely used (56%), followed by hint generators (27%) and assignment summaries that simplify a task’s instructions (17%) [ASEE]
Podcast: Unmind's Nick Taylor on AI and Mental Healthcare
In my latest podcast, I speak with Nick Taylor, the co-founder and CEO of Unmind. Their platform uses AI to help users measure, understand and improve their mental wellbeing. Which begs the questions: Does AI have a role to play in mental healthcare? Why should employers care? Are people hesitant about these things, and where are such platforms going? We’ll talk about all that and more on this edition of PeopleTech. [WorkforceAI]
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