Hiring freezes, redundancies, reorganisations – and all with reference to the beneficial effects of artificial intelligence (AI) from an entrepreneurial perspective because it increases productivity and has what it takes to take over jobs completely. It is feared that, like automation in industry and the arrival of robots, the integration of AI into work processes and work equipment will make many professions redundant or at least reshape and supplement them.

The first "use cases" already exist: At the end of the year, payment service provider Klarna announced that it was imposing a hiring freeze. CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski refers to AI tools that will mean fewer employees will be needed in future. The company will shrink, he is quoted as saying. AI represents "a major threat to many jobs" in the industry, he summarises.

IBM had already imposed a hiring freeze in May last year due to potential savings from AI. The Axel Springer publishing house then announced that 30% of jobs in tabloid media could be lost due to digital AI tools. In addition, in August, the headquarters of Deutsche Telekom's US subsidiary announced that 5,000 jobs would be replaced by AI, mainly in the back office.

It is not always entirely clear whether AI is in fact the reason for job losses or just an excuse. However, economists agree that the new technologies will cause major structural upheavals in the labour market, within companies, and entire industries.

In a major survey of 803 companies from 27 sectors worldwide, representing 11.3 million employees, the World Economic Forum (WEF) sought to find out where AI is heading in terms of jobs. The result: 83 million jobs could be cut over the next four years due to restructuring, but at the same time, 69 million new jobs would be created, some of them directly due to AI. The most significant job losses are expected in the banking sector, data entry, accounting and among clerks.

However, the effects need to be put into perspective: The investment bank HSBC emphasises that compared to other job threats such as too little growth, too high inflation, supply chain problems and foreign trade crises, AI is probably a lesser evil than those. "The fourth industrial revolution will change many areas of business," writes Barry O'Byrne, CEO of Global Commercial Banking at HSBC, but successful companies should not assign a diminished role to human skills. New technologies must be used so that "teams perform better and act more efficiently and creatively".

In a study, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) assumes that a total of 14% of all jobs are at high risk from automation. Still, AI would sometimes also make work more pleasant and productive. Moreover, the use of AI is more likely to lead to the reorganisation of activities than to actual job losses. Finally, there are still enough jobs where humans have a comparative advantage, for example, in areas that require empathy, social interaction, or certain types of decision-making. Humans are also superior to AI when it comes to genuine innovations and creative achievements that go beyond the mere recompilation of already existing material.

The Centre for European Policy (CEP) is much more sceptical in its study "Resisting or Rebooting the Rise of the Robots?". The researchers have analysed existing studies and focus primarily on the immediate years of restructuring. This is because it will take quite some time for a new balance to be established between the elimination of old jobs and the creation of new ones, as has happened in the restructuring phases of the other industrial revolutions before. In this critical phase, the social problems would escalate. Especially as many countries still believe they are safe at the moment: Employment is very high, unemployment has been low for years and, on top of this, demographic trends are creating a labour shortage. The employer market has turned into an employee market, where there is a shortage of skilled labour. The rude awakening would, therefore, cause great social unrest.

The CEP assumes that 20 million workers in the EU will lose their jobs in the short term due to the extensive use of AI. While previous technological advances supplemented the skills of employees and thus increased their productivity, the CEP researchers assume that this time, generative AI would "irreversibly destroy entire job profiles". Social unrest would be the result if precautions were not taken quickly, in view of the speed at which AI is developing.

"For the first time," says Berlin-based CEP digital expert Anselm Küsters, "even well-trained employees will have to fear for their jobs as a result of technological progress". Around one in ten jobs in the EU will be directly affected by the end of this decade. The spectrum ranges from managers and consultants to lawyers and marketing specialists.

The researchers are calling for politicians to adapt to this development and adjust their social security systems. "Old debates about a basic income" also need to be rethought. "The productive added value that generative AI will undoubtedly generate should be partially redirected in such a way that it supports the transition process both socio-politically and individually, thereby contributing to the rapid adoption of the technology." In other words, a basic income should take away people's fear of unemployment and loss of prosperity.

The problem is financing: Higher taxes on wealth and/or capital income are proposed. The latter, in particular, is likely to be favoured by structural change because more and more machines are doing the work instead of people and are generating corporate income. In the case of AI, another source of funding could also be considered: An AI tax. This is because AI obtains its knowledge from the essentially free collection of information that citizens leave on the internet. So far, the "web citizens" have not received any remuneration for this service. But as always, as many large countries as possible would have to take such a step together, as this would make the use of AI more expensive and increase the costs of location. Whether this would be enough to finance the basic income is also questionable.