IBM—IBM CEO announced pause on hiring for back-office roles expected to be replaced by AI
In May 2023, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna stated the company would pause hiring for back-office functions, particularly HR, estimating that 30% of non-customer-facing roles (~7,800 jobs) could be replaced by AI and automation over five years. He cited an existing example: IBM had already reduced HR staff doing manual work from 700 to fewer than 50. Krishna later partially walked back the comments, saying IBM would not backfill roles lost through normal attrition rather than implementing a blanket freeze.
Scoring Impact
| Topic | Direction | Relevance | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Responsible Automation | -against | primary | -1.00 |
| Overall incident score = | -0.885 | ||
Score = avg(topic contributions) × significance (high ×1.5) × confidence (0.59)
Evidence (1 signal)
IBM CEO Arvind Krishna told Bloomberg back-office hiring would pause as AI replaces 7,800 roles
IBM CEO Arvind Krishna told Bloomberg he expected to pause hiring for roughly 26,000 back-office workers, estimating 30% (~7,800 jobs) could be replaced by AI over five years. He later partially walked back, framing it as not backfilling roles lost through normal attrition.