Perhaps the most prominent concern about artificial intelligence is its putative potential to eliminate jobs at scale, a fear "Godfather of AI" Geoffrey Hinton has repeatedly raised.
Floods of layoffs at major firms like Amazon, Target, and UPS sparked speculation that AI had already begun taking jobs, but as Fortune reported, one well-placed expert is skeptical.
Sue Duke, LinkedIn's vice president of global public policy and managing director for Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa, shared shocking insights into AI and hiring at the Fortune CEO Forum on Nov. 26 in London.
Jeff Bezos and Sam Altman teased a future in which AI will make work functionally obsolete, while Elon Musk has declared AI will replace "all jobs," a sentiment shared by Bill Gates. All four are heavily invested in AI and awaiting a fiscal return, which could color their viewpoints.
The prospect of fewer available jobs isn't the only credible concern about AI. As data centers began springing up across the U.S. seemingly overnight, electric bills skyrocketed nationwide due to increased demand.
AI data centers consume immense amounts of water in addition to energy, and firms like Amazon and OpenAI are loath to disclose their overall environmental impact.
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Meanwhile, communities have started opposing new data centers, citing excessive noise and air pollution among a bevy of complaints. In late November, troubling reports of a cluster of rare cancers and miscarriages near an Amazon data center in Oregon began emerging.
While tech titans view AI's impact on jobs through an eternal-growth lens, Duke's perspective is informed by her high-ranking position at LinkedIn and a day-in, day-out focus on hiring in 2025.
As Fortune observed, the "hundreds of millions of workers hunting for jobs and employers posting open roles" make LinkedIn an excellent real-time indicator of hiring and headhunting, as well as whether AI is behind a "weak" employment market.
According to the outlet, Duke was not "buying the AI apocalypse narrative" so often trotted out as an excuse for layoffs or stalled hiring, and she specifically addressed an increasingly common refrain that AI has already displaced human workers.
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Yes 🤖 "That's not what we're seeing," Duke began, before explaining that LinkedIn data suggested the opposite was true — AI appeared to be creating jobs, not taking them.
"What we're seeing is that organizations who are adopting [AI] … they're actually going out and hiring more people to really take advantage of this technology."
"They're going out and looking for more business development people, [and] more technologically savvy people," Duke concluded.
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