- The CEO of Ford warned that AI could eliminate half of white-collar jobs.
- He emphasized the importance of skilled trades amid a slowdown in tech hiring.
- Some CEOs have sounded the AI alarm, while others are more skeptical of mass job displacement.
Jim Farley, the CEO of Ford, pumped the brakes on opting for an office job in the AI era.
Speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival on June 27 about what he coined the "essential economy," Farley reflected on his own family's journey. His grandfather, he said, was an orphan in Michigan and built a career at Ford from his early days as an hourly employee.
"Look around the room," he said in his opening remarks. "At some point, almost all of your families came from these kinds of jobs."
Farley warned, though, that the American education system focuses on four-year degrees instead of the trades, while hiring at tech firms is falling rapidly.
"Artificial intelligence is going to replace literally half of all white-collar workers in the US," Farley said. That's why, he said, more people are looking to the skilled trades. Representatives for Ford did not immediately respond to BI's request for comment.
Farley isn't the only executive sounding the alarm.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said in May that AI could eliminate half of entry-level office jobs within five years. Companies and governments, Amodei said, should stop "sugarcoating" the risks of widespread job replacement in fields including technology, finance, law, and consulting.
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Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told employees in June to expect corporate job cuts because of generative AI (people weren't thrilled about the memo). Jassy didn't offer many specifics, but said in a later interview that the new technology will create jobs in robotics and AI.
Other leaders have a different view. Cognizant CEO Ravi Kumar told BI that he thinks AI will create more jobs for college graduates, particularly when it comes to human labor. Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, also disagreed with Amodei's warning, and said AI will change everyone's job but could also crate creative opportunities.
White-collar job postings dropped 12.7% over the year in the first quarter, compared to a 11.6% dip for blue-collar jobs. The tech industry in particular has slowed down hiring. Big Tech firms' hiring of new grads fell around 50% from before the pandemic, according to venture capital firm SignalFire. Some of that has to do with AI, the report said.
GenZ is turning increasingly to blue-collar jobs, which some AI whisperers think is the safest spot in the labor market, at least for now.
