Unlike many of his high-powered peers in Big Tech, Verizon chief executive officer Dan Schulman isn’t sugarcoating the havoc that he believes will soon be wreaked on the American workplace by artificial intelligence.
Unemployment will climb to 20 to 30 percent in the next two to five years, he claims, and many manual laborers will eventually be usurped by humanoid robots.
“It’s a very difficult time, and everyone knows it is,” Schulman told The Wall Street Journal in an interview published Sunday. “So I think being authentic, being realistic, telling the truth, as best you can” is essential.
Other CEOs, he says, would be wise to give employees fair warning of AI’s inevitable rise in the workforce, a starring role that’s dead certain to eliminate jobs and forever change the corporate landscape.
Schulman followed his own advice in November, a month after he took over as CEO. He oversaw the creation of a $20 million program to retrain 13,000 soon-to-be ex-workers and help them transition to new jobs.
“Verizon is the first company to set up a fund to specifically focus on the opportunities and necessary skill sets as we enter the age of AI,” Schulman said in a letter to the company’s nearly 100,000 employees. “It is my intent to also work with other companies and the public sector to address the opportunities and challenges in a world where technology will impact all of us.”
He isn’t the only one to forecast the AI tsunami expected to soon wash over the job market. A new report by Boston Consulting Group predicts 50 to 55 percent of all U.S. jobs will be impacted by AI in the next few years, with up to 15 percent of them completely eradicated.
