You’ve probably read the news. “AI takes away jobs.” “Automation taking over from people.” There are CEOs who are even proud of it.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, says that thanks to progress in AI, the next billion-dollar company could be made up of just one person. Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, believes that AI could take away almost half of all entry-level white-collar work in five years.
Over 64,000 people have already been laid off in the tech industry this year alone. Microsoft and Intel are leading the way, and AI is a big reason why.
People innovate, AI imitates
This is not only short-sighted, but it’s also bad business. Companies that let people go today in the name of AI will have to play catch-up tomorrow.
AI is definitely great at getting more done with less. The process goes faster, less work needs to be done over and over, and time is gained back. AI, on the other hand, can’t make new goods and services by itself.
Companies that come up with new ideas tend to do better in the long run. That make fresh goods. Who think about how things should work in new ways and make big discoveries that wow their customers in new ways.
There is data to back it up. McKinsey found that businesses that make innovation a part of their culture are 3.5 times more likely to do better than their rivals.
It’s also true in the past—just ask Blockbuster. Many people bought from it and it made a lot of money in the early 2000s. But it didn’t have the foresight to build the next wave of value on its place as the leader. It was made by Netflix instead.
And people are still the only ones who can think of things in that way. In the end, AI doesn’t come up with new ideas. It reuses stuff. It copies patterns, learns from other people’s ideas, and doesn’t go too far ahead of itself.
That’s not a bug; that’s how AI is made. A professor named Mark Runco says, “AI can only make artificial creativity.” It can help creative people, but it can’t do their job for them.
Good luck if your plan is to fire the people who could make the next big thing. You might be able to get more done in the short term, but don’t be shocked if your product plan starts to fall apart.
How AI can really unleash creativity
What should you do instead if you’re in charge of a big company? Hold on to your skills. Tell your team to come up with new ideas with the extra time AI has given them. Let your people have room to think.
Like Gmail and AdSense, some of the most popular and, more importantly, profitable goods in the world got their start as side projects at Google. Not because someone asked for them. But because smart people had time and room to look around.
What if those same people had been fired the previous quarter? In fact, that’s what’s happening now.
Too many leaders are taking the time and money saved by AI and putting it right down to the bottom line. They’re making quick money and calling it invention.
AI has its limits.
This is all before you even think about the chance that many of these so-called “efficiencies” will never happen. While AI is getting a lot of attention, people haven’t been very good at guessing the future. Journals from the 1950s and 1960s said that by now, people would be taking jet packs to work and vacuuming their homes with nuclear power.
This could be the same case. Putting AI into real-life business processes is not easy, especially when it comes to complex information work. There are problems with the technology, risks to privacy, and the fact that it’s still not clear how to fix or debug AI bots that go off track.
It’s likely that some of the companies that are letting people go today will quietly hire them back in a few years, when they learn the technology isn’t as good as they thought.
The companies that cut the deepest won’t be the ones that win in the end. People who keep the right people, give them space, and use AI to help them be even more creative will win.
The rules of business are being changed by AI. What’s important now is how you use it. When one company sees a chance to cut jobs, another sees a chance to make something new.
In five years, only one of those will still be on top of the market.
