Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Job Creation and Cloud Services
Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the job landscape, along with cloud services that are affecting the pace of new job creation and reducing workforce needs across various sectors, according to a recent discussion on Reddit.
As businesses increasingly depend on AI-driven tools and cloud solutions to optimise their operations and reduce costs, a Reddit contributor pointed out that AI is not directly eliminating jobs but is instead stalling the growth of the job market.
The Redditor shared insights about a prominent investment bank that, cautious about using outside AI models, created its own “LLM to assist developers in enhancing their coding efficiency, which boosted productivity.” Consequently, a project that would have necessitated six to eight additional developers was accomplished by the current team instead.
The contributor mentioned, “Now other division leaders are adopting the same method in their projects within this firm,” indicating a significant trend towards AI integration across different industries.
In a similar vein, a product-driven company completely “dismissed its entire onsite documentation team” and cut down its offshore workforce from 15 to 8, with intentions to further reduce it to a mere 5. “They are utilising a paid AI tool for all documentation tasks,” thereby negating the requirement for human involvement in this area.
In addition to AI, the widespread integration of cloud services is instigating substantial shifts within IT departments. The Reddit user recounted their personal experience, revealing that on-premise systems previously engaged multiple teams for oversight, including “networking teams and management for all in-house hosted SQL servers, Oracle servers, and Hadoop.”
Post-migration to Azure, “all these teams have been disbanded.” Even transaction systems that once relied on in-house Oracle servers have transitioned to managed cloud services. “The newly formed cloud team is capable of managing the same workload with just 30-40% of the former employee count, after 13 years of operation,” demonstrating the drastic cut in workforce requirements.
Another notable transformation can be observed in customer service and frontend applications. “Chatbots serving frontend app/web portal needs – Paid cloud solutions. There’s a significant disruption occurring in this area,” mentioned the Reddit contributor. AI-enhanced chatbots are starting to take over human roles in customer support, thereby reducing expenses for companies while concurrently limiting job prospects in this field.
While AI and cloud services are not provoking immediate mass layoffs, they are “initially freezing new roles, phasing out older ones,” as remarked by the Reddit user. Companies are choosing to reassign responsibilities among their current workforce instead of recruiting new employees.
With a diminishing number of job vacancies and an escalating pool of engineers vying for positions, only the top-tier skilled professionals are expected to find stable long-term employment. The user anticipates that “only 3 out of 20” engineers might be required in the AI-integrated future, indicating a pronounced reduction in workforce demand.
