From job losses to new careers: Meta CMO on the uncertain future of AI at work

Alex Schultz acknowledged that the overall balance between job losses and job creation was still uncertain.

Artificial intelligence continued to be described as both a risk and an opportunity, with its impact on employment hinging on how organisations adapt. Alex Schultz, Chief Marketing Officer at Meta, said in a recent podcast appearance that three elements were particularly important in determining whether companies contract or expand with AI adoption.

Schultz, who has worked at Meta since the early years of Facebook, spoke on The "A16z Podcast", offering his perspective on how automation and machine learning were influencing the structure of firms and the types of work available.

The first trend Schultz identified concerned productivity gains. “Existing stuff is going to be done more efficiently with AI as it exists today,” he said. According to him, this made certain routine or repetitive roles less necessary, with businesses likely to restructure around smaller teams.

This reduction had already been acknowledged elsewhere in the technology sector. Earlier in the year, Amazon’s Chief Executive Andy Jassy said that AI-driven efficiency could lead to reductions in parts of its corporate workforce. Analysts have described this trend as “The Great Shrinking,” pointing to how automation often led to staff cuts.

At the same time, Schultz stressed that AI also enabled activity that was not viable until recently. He pointed to advances in semantic analysis, which allowed online platforms to assess and recommend short-form video content more effectively. Such capability, he said, had not been achievable without the arrival of modern AI systems.

New employment categories were emerging in parallel. Schultz cited roles such as AI trainers, prompt engineers, and experts guiding corporate adoption. These positions had not existed a few years ago, he noted, underlining how technological breakthroughs were producing novel fields of work.

The third factor Schultz highlighted was affordability. Some initiatives that were technically possible in the past had been blocked by cost. AI had lowered those barriers.

He gave the example of automated customer support. While the technology had existed, he said, building such systems used to be prohibitively expensive. Current AI platforms allowed organisations to deploy support bots at scale and at lower cost, creating demand for developers, designers, and system integrators.

Schultz acknowledged that the overall balance between job losses and job creation was still uncertain. “It’s still up in the air,” he told the podcast. He said some firms might shrink due to efficiency, while others could expand significantly by investing in AI-led innovation.

He also noted the unpredictability posed by artificial general intelligence (AGI). If AGI were to arrive sooner than expected, Schultz argued, it could fundamentally alter not only company headcounts but also the very structure of employment itself.