As we roll into October, we’re just weeks away from the three year anniversary of the first smash hit AI chatbot model, OpenAI’s ChatGPT. With no sign of a slowdown on AI spending, one would expect us to be in the midst of an AI revolution, something to show for three years of unbridled tech investment.
Yet when it comes to AI in the workplace, there are suspiciously few stories of companies successfully integrating the tech. There is, however, plenty of failure: the fintech firm Klarna took to forcing engineers to answer customer service calls after its AI deployment stalled out, law firms are being punished for AI’s embarrassing errors, while other companies have resorted to hiring freelancers to fix AI’s sloppy mistakes.
That makes it all the more incredible to see that the multinational IT consulting firm Accenture has laid of some 11,000 employees in recent months, driven by a massive bet that businesses will prioritize hiring AI experts from now on.
According to Reuters, the cruel downsizing effort is part of a stupefying six-month restructuring plan which is estimated to cost the firm $865 million once all is said and done. In a recent earnings call, Accenture’s CEO Julie Sweet said the firm’s number one priority is “upskilling its reinventors,” which is corporate-speak meaning it expects workers to have specific training in AI systems like large language models from now on.
“We are reinventing what we sell, how we deliver, how we partner and how we operate Accenture,” Sweet said on the call. “In short, on-the-ground, advanced AI is becoming a part of everything we do.”
That’s a bog-standard statement in today’s day and age. But if Accenture workers fail to appease their overlords, the CEO says they’ll be dumped like yesterday’s trash. In their place, the IT firm will hire people who already have the AI “skills” necessary to appease stockholders. This includes tapping into an increasingly “global” workforce — a nice way to say “outsourcing jobs to underpaid gig workers in the global south.”
“Our number-one strategy is upskilling, given the skills we need, and we’ve had a lot of experience in upskilling,” Sweet said. “We’re trying to, in a very compressed timeline — where we don’t have a viable path for skilling — sort of exiting people so we can get more of the skills in we need.”
Asked about how this is all supposed to shake out financially after the dust settles, chief financial officer Angie Park told analysts she expects savings of over $1 billion.
“These actions will result in cost-savings, which will be reinvested in our people and our business,” Park explained, adding that Accenture executives expect to increase their headcount in 2026, after they cull the herd of its non-AI trained staff.
Asked when AI would factor into her own…
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