IBM to pause hiring for jobs that AI could do

IBM currently employs about 260,000 workers and continues to hire for software development and customer-facing roles. — Reuters

International Business Machines Corp chief executive officer Arvind Krishna said the company expects to pause hiring for roles it thinks could be replaced with artificial intelligence in the coming years.

Hiring in back-office functions – such as human resources – will be suspended or slowed, Krishna said in an interview. These non-customer-facing roles amount to roughly 26,000 workers, Krishna said. “I could easily see 30% of that getting replaced by AI and automation over a five-year period.”