Roundup: The Quest for 0 Workers, the Long Road to Transformation & More
The quest for zero workers, the road to transformation and what candidates want.
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News & Notes
Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud
Mechanize, a San Franciso-based startup, wants to eliminate jobs entirely. “Our goal is to fully automate work,” co-founder Tamay Besiroglu told the New York Times. “We want to get to a fully automated economy, and make that happen as fast as possible.”
Typically, the media narrative implies that major disruption to the job market is inevitable. However, most experts say true transformation is a ways away. AI has yet to prove it can shoulder complex workloads or navigate complex systems, they point out, and AI’s strength is still with single tasks. Even Mechanize admits its vision of “full automation” will take decades to realize.
Still, we’re hearing more about the importance of efficiency and productivity from business leaders as companies open up about their quest to reduce headcount. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy acknowledged that AI will eventually “reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.” IBM has used AI to replace several hundred HR workers across the company, but said it’s using the savings to hire more programmers and sales people. Intel plans to replace a number of marketing employees with Accenture’s AI.
Don’t expect this thinking to change: If anything, the economy rewards companies for cutting heads. As the Journal notes, today’s workforce reductions have coincided with “a surge in sales and profits.” As a result, there’s been “a fundamental shift” in how business leaders regard their workforces.
Why Transformation’s a Long Way Off
In the short and medium terms, companies using AI to “streamline” their workforces may be chasing their own tails. Research from the National Bureau of Economic Research found the impact of AI chatbots on earnings and work hours has been slight.
The study focused on jobs most exposed to disruption from AI, such as HR professionals, accountants, support specialists, marketing professionals and teachers. (The data came from Danish companies, whose adoption of AI, hiring and firing are similar to firms in the U.S.)
“Software, writing code, writing marketing tasks, writing job posts for HR professionals — these are the tasks the AI can speed up. But in a broader occupational survey, where AI can still be helpful, we see much smaller savings,” co-author Anders Humlum told Fortune.
This is just one indicator leading to executive nervousness about AI. CEOs say just a quarter of AI projects, 25%, have delivered on promised ROI. Two-thirds of the CEOs said their decision-making on AI has been driven by a “fear of missing out” rather than concrete results or concrete promises. “[The] risk of falling behind drives them to invest in some technologies before they have a clear understanding of the value they bring to the organization,” the study said.
If the report’s findings are less-than-exciting, remember the AI era is still young. “Getting productivity gains from any technology requires organizational adjustment, a range of complementary investments, and improvements in worker skills, via training and on-the-job learning,” economist wrote in Fortune last year.
Make Cheating Cool Again
I’m not sure what I like less about this: The fact a startup is openly building tools that helps candidates cheat on interviews, or the fact that investors are putting millions of dollars into it.
The San Francisco startup Cluely tracks a user’s displays to feed them information in real-time. The idea is to help them, say, answer questions during live interviews. Andreessen Horowitz has invested $15 million in the company, following a $5.3 million round led by Abstract Ventures and Susa Ventures.
While Cluely (no longer) openly talks about its use as a cheating tool, it shares a wink and a nod by calling itself “undetectable.” Founder Chungin "Roy" Lee told Business Insider the company will use the investment to raise the product’s profile. His goal is to reach 1 billion views and, he said, "We'll do pretty much whatever it takes to do that."
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Other News
Vendors Cast a Wary Eye on Workday AI-Bias Lawsuit
Derek Mobley claimed he was turned down for more than 100 positions when by Workday’s platform, and sued the company over alleged bias in its AI-driven recruiting tools. Now, his suit is “the most significant challenge yet to the software behind nearly every hiring decision these days,” said The Wall Street Journal. (Workday says Mobley’s claims have no merit.)
The case could drag on for years, and could force Workday to reveal how its algorithm evaluates applications. In addition, Ifeoma Ajunwa, a professor at Emory University School of Law, said the case could change how third-party platforms are regulated. “Hiring intermediaries have pretty much been excused from regulation and they’ve escaped any legal scrutiny,” he said. “I think this case will change that,” he said. [WSJ]
Candidates Want More Personalization than Employers Provide
Candidates expect their job-hunting experience to be personalized and engaging, but employers are missing the mark. For example, 87% of the Fortune 500 don’t use AI to automate and personalize their career sites, despite candidates’ demand for consumer-grade experiences, according to Phenom’s State of Candidate Experience: 2025 Benchmarks Report.
About as many don’t suggest related job openings based on the candidate’s current job title and skills, 83% don’t offer a chatbot that provides job recommendations and 76% don’t automatically detect the candidate’s location and suggest relevant nearby jobs.
“There is a clear divide between companies experimenting with AI and those truly harnessing its power to accelerate talent acquisition processes and transform candidate engagement through hyper-personalization,” said Phenom Senior Director of Product Marketing John Harrington.
LinkedIn Users Shrug at Writing Help from AI
LinkedIn users aren’t responding to the idea of AI helping polish their posts. This is because of how LinkedIn is used, CEO Ryan Roslansky believes. “This is your resume online,” he said. “If you’re getting called out on X or TikTok, that’s one thing…. But when you’re getting called out on LinkedIn, it really impacts your ability to create economic opportunity for yourself.” [TechCrunch]
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