Artificial intelligence is going to force many companies to slash their workforce over the next five years, a survey conducted by staffing provider Adecco Group has claimed.
The survey released on Friday was based on responses from senior executives at 2,000 large companies globally.
The report indicated that 41 per cent of these people anticipate having smaller staff sizes due to advancements in AI technology.
Although the majority of senior executives surveyed by Adecco acknowledge the transformative potential of AI, a significant number express dissatisfaction with the progress made in implementing this technology within their organisations.
The Adecco survey, which is one of the biggest studies on AI, comes after a 2023 report by the World Economic Forum, which found that 25 per cent of companies believed AI would lead to job cuts, but 50 per cent thought it would also create new job opportunities.
Adecco surveyed businesses across nine countries: the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Spain, Canada, Australia, and Singapore. The sectors included defence, pharmaceuticals, healthcare, industry, and logistics.
"Almost all jobs are going to be impacted by AI one way or another," Adecco CEO Denis Machuel told Reuters. "AI can be a job killer and it can also be a job creator."
Machuel  added, "Ten years ago there was this big fear many jobs are going to be destroyed by digital, when actually lots of jobs have been created by the digital world… Between jobs created by AI and jobs destroyed, we believe this is going to be balanced."
Tech giants like Google and Microsoft are laying off employees as they transition to AI systems like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's chatbot Gemini. Machuel suggests companies train their current staff to adapt to AI rather than hiring outside specialists.
Generative AI creates text, photos, and videos from prompts, sparking hope for task automation and fear of job loss.
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