Nearly 4,000 people working in tech lost their jobs because of AI in May (2024)

New Delhi,UPDATED: Jun 4, 2023 09:54 IST

The tech job market has been quite volatile for the last couple of months and ever since AI tools like ChatGPT, Bard and Bing have been launched, things have become even more challenging, a new report says. OpenAI introduced ChatGPT in November 2022, and Google and Microsoft launched their own AI tools Bard and Bing in February this year. The three AI tools have been the talk of the tech world ever since their inception and today, more and more companies are using AI to the best of their advantage. And in May, nearly 4,000 people lost their jobs to the emerging tech.

4,000 people lost jobs because of AI

A Business Insider report originally attributed to a monthly report from Challenger, Gray, and Christmas revealed that in May this year, around 4,000 people lost their jobs to artificial intelligence. The report added that in total, around 80,000 people were laid off of their jobs last month. From these, 3,900 job cuts were because of AI. The reasons behind other job cuts could be economic conditions, cost cutting, restructuring at the company, or mergers and acquisitions.

The report also shared insights on total job cuts in 2023 till now. From January to May, around 4 lakh people lost their jobs.

A spokesperson also told Insider that this was the first time that job cuts were being attributed to AI. The spokesperson added that all the layoffs were from the tech sector.

ChatGPT replacing humans in the workplace

In February this year, another survey conducted by job advice platform Resumebuilder.com revealed that some US-based companies had started deploying ChatGPT instead of human workers.

1,000 business leaders participated in the survey and almost half of the US companies that participated said that they are using ChatGPT and that the chatbot has replaced workers at their companies.

Resumebuilder, in a statement back then, said that business leaders were 'impressed' by the viral chatbot's work. The company said, "Overall, most business leaders are impressed by ChatGPT’s work. Fifty-five percent say the quality of work produced by ChatGPT is excellent, while 34 percent say it’s very good."

A Business Today report quoted Resumebuilder.com’s Chief Career Advisor Stacie Haller saying in a statement, "There is a lot of excitement regarding the use of ChatGPT. Since this new technology is just ramping up in the workplace, workers surely need to be thinking of how it may affect the responsibilities of their current job. The results of this survey shows that employers are looking to streamline some job responsibilities using ChatGPT."

Moreover, ChatGPT creator Sam Altman also said in an interview in March that one job that could be replaced by ChatGPT was customer service.