Very few jobs will be completely replaced by AI: IBM HR chief Nickle LaMoreaux

Nickle LaMoreaux, Senior Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer at IBM

Artificial intelligence (AI) will not take away jobs at IBM; instead, it will replace or supplement certain tasks and roles to enable employees to do different work focused on helping them move up the value chain, said Nickle LaMoreaux, Senior Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer at IBM.

This comes months after IBM’s Chief Executive Officer Arvind Krishna had said the company may pause hiring for roles it thinks could be replaced by AI in the coming years. Krishna had detailed that he sees around 30 percent of non-customer-facing roles—roughly around 7,800 jobs—being replaced by AI and automation over a five-year period.

LaMoreaux, however, told Moneycontrol in an exclusive interview that Krishna’s words were taken “a little bit out of context.”

“I think there are very few jobs that are going to be completely replaced by AI; very few jobs. I also believe that there are going to be very few jobs that will be totally brand new. From an HR perspective, I worry that all of the media on this is getting it completely wrong,” she said.

According to LaMoreaux, IBM has around 300,000 employees, Krishna was talking about only 7,000 employees, making it a very small base in comparison. She explained that maybe 2 percent of jobs will go away and maybe 2 percent of jobs will be created anew.

“The bigger challenge for all of us is the 96% of jobs in the middle that are going to change. They are still going to exist, but how we do them will be completely different. I think the narrative is going wrong because people are talking about AI as a replacement technology—it's really a supplement,” she added.

Also read: AI regulations have to be risk-based, driven by use case: IBM’s Sriram Raghavan

Taking a cue from how her HR vertical has been functioning globally, LaMoreaux believes that while a role might go away, that person “may now be doing something different to your point, moving up the value chain.”

“We have moved professionals to higher value work. Though this is not a challenge in India, there are going to be some countries where the birth rates and the population dynamics are in a very dire state. And so they are not going to have enough labour to support their economy. I think some things like AI are the way to get through that if it can do kind of the Tier-I stuff. That way they can have people to do the higher value stuff,” she said.

On India capabilities and AI skilling

India accounts for nearly one-third of IBM’s total global workforce, according to multiple media reports. In fact, 80 percent of the India R&D workforce is involved in researching and developing IBM’s AI capabilities, contributing significantly to its AI and the data platform offering, Watson X.

IBM is also expanding its teams into emerging clusters, including Kochi and Gandhinagar. Kochi has an AI centre of excellence.

LaMoreaux makes it a point to visit India every year. During her recent visit, she told Moneycontrol that India is a huge part of IBM’s business and is mission-critical to all parts of the company, representing teams for both IBM’s hardware and software services.

“We often talk about India really being a microcosm of the larger idea of IBM. So, that's something that's pretty unique. Getting a sense on the ground here is pretty exciting,” she said.

Almost 50 percent of IBM’s current global workforce is AI trained and India’s number is a little higher, as the country comprises of a lot of software talent building the AI product, LaMoreaux said.

“Many of us within the company now have AI skills because we're learning teamers, and are learning how to apply AI to our different processes. So, right now where it's some combination of AI skills, we're at 50%. And we're going to go north of that in the next 12 to 24 months,” she said.

LaMoreaux has a vision of having 100% of IBM’s employees understanding AI, “because it's going to transform all of our jobs”.

Focus on skill-based hiring

While there is a lot of uncertainty in the global economic environment and the technology environment, given the rate and pace of change and also how that technology is going to be used, India has been uniquely positioned, said LaMoreaux.

“Why India is uniquely positioned is, first, because of its population demographics. Other countries are really investing in skills, but they're not going to be able to do it at the volume that you’re able to do it here. Second, I do think the investment that the entire country, as well as other companies are making in skills here is huge,” she added.

“Our business is pretty optimistic, both domestically and how we support global clients out of India here,” said LaMoreaux.

She did not divulge the exact number of people the multinational is looking to hire in India but highlighted that IBM has been very steady in hiring here, especially in terms of campus hires. LaMoreaux also pointed out that hiring is now becoming more “skill based” as AI skills are taking centrestage.

“So, over the last year, in particular, we were very prudent of what we hired in, what skills… and we’re seeing tremendous growth in some skills like AI.  Within just our software lab, there's been a dramatic increase. And so, we’re going to continue to see very steady growth (in hiring), but it is going to be very much skill based,” she said.

Speaking on the kind of cohorts IBM will be hiring for in India, she said “We have always been heavily pivoted towards campus hiring. It’s just the right way because we are committed to growing from within. And then obviously, we do look at targeted senior hiring, but it’s majorly campus hiring…One of the value propositions that we'll bring is that we will train you.”

“Campus hiring is going to primarily focus around technical talent—engineering talent that we can then train in AI products. And I think that’s how we’re going to think about this. And the experienced professionals that we’ll be bringing in will be because of their domain and industry expertise,” she explained.