IBM chief flags hiring pause as group eyes AI strategy - Bloomberg News

Investing.com -- International Business Machines (NYSE:IBM) plans to pause hiring for jobs that the more than century-old U.S. company believes could soon be adopted by artificial intelligence, according to comments made by chief executive officer Arvind Krishna in an interview with Bloomberg News.

Krishna told the news service that hiring for the group's roughly 26,000 non-customer-facing roles, which include areas like human resources, will be suspended or slowed.

Krishna estimated in the interview that "30%" - or about 7,800 - of these jobs could be lost over a "five-year period." He expects that tasks typically performed by these workers, such as providing employment verification letters or transferring other employees between divisions, will instead become totally automated. However, he noted that the performance of other functions like employee evaluations will most likely not be taken over by artificial intelligence over the next decade.

IBM currently has around 260,000 workers on staff. Earlier this year, it unveiled changes that will see about 5,000 jobs cut. However, the Armonk, New York-based company is still hiring for software developers and customer-facing positions, with Krishna saying that it added roughly 7,000 people in the first quarter.