It seems employees around the world are right to be scared that AI could take their jobs.
Four thousand roles are to be slashed at one of Asia’s biggest banks over the next three years as AI takes over some of the work.
However, the bank – DBS – says that permanent staff won’t be affected and that actually there will be around 1,000 new roles created as it pivots to roll-out the technology.
What Can Bank Employees Expect?
BBC News reports that the bank, which is based in Singapore, is one of the first to reveal how AI uptake will impact its workforce.
A spokesperson described the reduction in head count as “natural attrition” and said that it will mainly see temporary and contract roles not renewed. The bank has 41,000 employees of which less than 9000 are on temporary contracts.
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Chief Executive, Piyush Gupta, added that the bank had already been deploying AI for more than 10 years and now uses more than 800 different AI models to fulfil different tasks.
Jobs Being Cut in Banking Industry
A report from Bloomberg Intelligence published at the beginning of the year suggested that global banks will cut as many as 200,000 jobs in the next three to five years.
The senior analyst who wrote the report, Tomasz Noetzel, suggested that the cuts will mostly be felt in back office, middle office and operations teams. “Any jobs involving routine, repetitive tasks are at risk,” he said. “But AI will not eliminate them fully, rather it will lead to workforce transformation.”
And it’s a trend that will be felt in every industry. Only weeks ago, Salesforce announced that it is shedding 1,000 jobs but that it is also hiring new staff “to sell new artificial intelligence products”.
One of the most worrying predictions came from the Inter-American Development Bank, which published an index that predicts how many jobs will be affected by AI in the coming decade.
It states that AI will impact as many as 43 million jobs in the US alone; and 980 million roles worldwide.
Boosting Profits for Banks
The Bloomberg reports suggests though the AI could see huge financial boosts for banks. As reported by Digit News, banks could see a 17% rise in their pre-tax profits and this could add as much as $180 billion to their combined bottom line.
With this potential financial gain, it is no surprise that companies are pushing ahead – and hiring staff with AI knowledge. The Future of Work report from the World Economic Forum said that technological skills – with AI and big data at the top of the list – will grow in importance more rapidly than any other skills in the next five years.
It emphasized that employees need to focus on upskilling to keep their jobs as AI uptake increases worldwide. For those whose roles are in jeopardy, the WEF is encouraging companies to offer training; but some companies are already taking the quicker option of clearing their ranks and then recruiting afresh.
