Will Generative AI Take Away Startup Jobs? With layoffs becoming a key strategy to achieve profitability this funding winter, startups may resort to replacing employees with chatbots

For many years, Artificial intelligence (AI) was just a concept that carried the readers and writers of science fiction to the world of infinite imagination. Year 1956 was when AI gained its name in the real world at the Dartmouth workshop, albeit restricted to research lab as a niche discipline.

A few years later, AI finally entered the real world and that is when many started fearing that it would soon replace humans and take away jobs by imitating most cognitive abilities of a human being. But, years passed and AI was still a niche concept used by only a few people. Until the dawn of startups, globally and in India. Startups started leveraging AI to disrupt the business environment and to prove operational efficiency. But, jobs were still more or less safe.

However, today, with the popularity of ChatGPT and generative AI and the rise of startup ecosystem, 'AI taking away jobs' is no longer a debate inside the four walls of institutions, it seems to have become a reality.

Will it take away jobs?

"We had to layoff 90% of our support team because of this AI chatbot. Tough? Yes. Necessary? Absolutely," tweeted Suumit Shah, CEO and co-founder, Dukaan.

With profitability becoming the priority for many startups, they seem to be looking at AI as a cost-cutting tool and finding ways in which AI can reduce processes or replace people.

"Given the state of economy, startups are prioritizing "profitability" over striving to become "unicorns," and so are we. It's less magical, sure, but at least it pays the bills! Customer Support had been a struggle for us since long & fixing it felt like an opportunity to me," tweeted Shah.

With how capable AI has become in taking over repetitive tasks traditionally handled by humans, AI has emerged as a significant factor in shaping job roles, with implications ranging from top executive positions to call center operations.

"In fact, the advent of chatbots capable of generating content and visuals can deal a body blow to jobs in fields such as design and software engineering. However, at the same time, it is crucial for employees and companies to embrace and utilize AI. This is because AI leads to increased efficiency and higher productivity, and in today's times, there's no going without it. With how fast AI is being adopted and implemented, AI will, ultimately, lead to job creation. There is already nascent demand for roles such as AI trainers, AI prompt engineers, AI auditors, and data annotation specialists," said Shauraya Bhutani, co-founder, Capital Connect Advisors.

According to a recent report from Goldman Sachs, automation poses a potential risk to around 300 million jobs worldwide, with a quarter of all work being susceptible to replacement by generative AI. IBM said that it was planning to pause hiring for roles that AI can reasonably do. Roughly 7,800 IBM jobs could be replaced by AI, automation, the company's CEO Krishna was quoted as saying.

Jobs anticipated to be affected

The initial wave of jobs anticipated to be affected by AI has consistently included customer service. "While coding and computer programming remain in demand, there is a possibility that AI tools may partially fill certain gaps in the near future. Media-related occupations such as advertising, content creation, and technical writing are also expected to be influenced, along with certain roles within the legal industry," said Bhutani.

"Since the release of ChatGPT and its integration into our solutions, we've been working closely with multiple companies— startups, unicorns, and enterprises alike—on leveraging generative AI to improve contact center efficiency and customer experience. Currently, the most successful use cases for companies are agent-facing. These solutions improve call monitoring, agent performance, and effectiveness manifold. They help agents search through a knowledge base faster or offer a personalized response based on customer history," said Chaitanya Chokkareddy, Chief Product Officer, Ozonetel.

Here is an interesting tweet on "20 jobs that Chat GPT 4 will replace in the near future . Predicted by the AI itself", shared by Prashanth Rangaswamy.

However, many feel that replacing AI with people is not the right way to go forward. "In its current avatar, for customer-facing roles, we caution companies against replacing agents with AI especially since the model still hallucinates and some issues around customer privacy and compliance still need to be solved. Besides, at the end of the day, people will always want to talk to other people, not bots," said Chokkareddy.

Experts feelt that companies should look at AI as a tool that can augment their agent's capabilities rather than replace them.