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The CEO of an Indian tech startup has laid off 90 percent of the company’s support staff in favor of a chatbot powered by artificial intelligence.
Suumit Shah, founder and CEO of Bangalore-based e-commerce company Dukaan, said the bot, which was built by one of the company’s data scientists, was able to respond immediately to initial inquiries, while staff spent an average of one minute and 44 hours there. took about seconds.
Shah, who founded the company in 2020, said the layoffs were “heavy” but “necessary” at a time when many others in the tech industry and elsewhere are uncertain about their job security as AI’s presence grows.
The time it took to resolve a customer’s issue also apparently dropped by nearly 98 percent on average when using the chatbot – from two hours and 13 minutes to three minutes and 12 seconds.
His company’s move is just one small part of the global trend toward AI that has led to numerous other job cuts.
Suumit Shah is CEO and founder of Dukaan – an e-commerce company based in Bangalore, India
He shared a thread on Twitter detailing how he replaced 90 percent of his customer support staff with an AI chatbot
The company’s move is just one small part of the global move to AI, which has lost many other jobs
He tweeted in a thread, “Given the state of [the] economy, startups prioritize ‘profitability’ over striving to become ‘unicorns’, and so do we.”
Shah added that the job cuts have reduced the cost of his customer support function by about 85 percent, an area that has been a long-standing problem for them.
Shah told CNN that the 23 layoffs were in September, but his announcement wasn’t until Monday.
He added that he believed “in a future where AI and humans work together,” and was also interested in developing ways for AI to take over other areas of business.
The tech founder ended by saying that according to their website, Dukaan was still hiring for multiple roles, including roles in engineering, marketing and sales.
However, the majority of the tweet’s viewers were seemingly less than impressed with his move to the company.
The commenters, in particular, seemed struck by the tone of the thread in the context that it directly relates to the massive job loss.
Many saw it as showing “lack of empathy” or “disrespectful” from the CEO.
One of them said, “I don’t think losing a job is something to brag about.”
This sentiment was echoed by many, with one adding that it was “extremely disrespectful to all the people who were fired” and “leaves such a bad taste.”
Someone else responded with a clown emoji and said, “This guy [is] he felt so sorry for it that he posted a whole thread about it.”
Another described it as a “new low” for marketing, adding that “you just couldn’t have said anything.”
Shah responded to some of the criticism, reiterating that “it was a tough decision.”
He added: “As expected, “someone” will take offense on behalf of “someone else”.
He then suggested that people on Twitter were only interested in reading about profitability rather than sympathy.
Responses again suggested otherwise, with one person saying, “I feel sorry for the people who work for you. Also happy for people who have been fired because they no longer have to work for you.’
Commentators seemed struck by the thread’s tone in the context that it directly relates to large-scale job cuts
However, Dukaan is certainly not the first company to drop staff in a move to AI, although not every CEO who does tweets a thread about the decision.
In addition, a World Economic Forum report in May predicts that AI will lead to the loss of 83 million jobs between now and 2027.
The jobs generally expected to be most at risk are jobs that require little emotional input and follow a structured set of rules.
These could include analyst roles, software engineers, and accountants.
Other experts have issued even starker warnings, such as the possibility of 80 percent of human careers being taken over by bots “in the next few years,” as companies look to gain competitive advantage at the expense of their workforce.
As a result, many industry leaders, such as Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak, have called for a pause in AI development, signing an open letter in March asking for a six-month hiatus.
Another dramatic move was that of AI ‘Godfather’ Geoffery Hinton, who this year quit Google while warning about AI – comparing it to the atomic bomb.