Companies Begin to Rehire Following AI Job Cuts

Employers who once viewed artificial intelligence as a replacement for workers are rehiring employees, CNBC reported Wednesday (July 1).

The trend is happening amid investor worries about the viability of the AI boom, the report said.

Among the companies changing course is Ford, which has begun reemploying hundreds of engineers to work on quality issues automated systems couldn’t handle, according to the report.

“Artificial intelligence is a fantastic tool, but it’s only as good as the information you use to train it,” said Ford Vice President of Vehicle Hardware Engineering Charles Poon, per the report.

Other companies that are reconsidering their AI plans to focus instead on human workers include IBM and Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), the report said.

IBM announced plans to triple hiring for entry-level employees after replacing its human resources function with AI. That tool handled roughly 94% of routine requests but could not meet the other 6%, which included ethical dilemmas, according to the report.

“If we don’t continue to invest in entry-level hires, what happens in three to five years,” IBM Chief Human Resources Officer Nickle LaMoreaux said, per the report. “There’s no pipeline; the well simply dries up.”

Meanwhile, CBA cut more than 40 members of its customer service team last year and replaced them with an AI voice bot. But that system couldn’t handle the job, leading to increased calls and causing the bank to reverse its layoffs, the report said.

“Getting CBA to rescind these job cuts is a massive win,” Australia’s finance sector union said in a statement, per the report.

The bank later acknowledged it “did not adequately consider all relevant business considerations” when announcing the cuts and it “should have been more thorough in [its] assessment of the roles required,” according to the report.

Other companies are creating new jobs in response to AI, PYMNTS reported June 3.

“The pattern emerging across Box, Google, IBM and others isn’t primarily displacement,” the report said. “It’s a new organizational layer sitting between foundation models and business operations, staffed by roles that require both technical depth and the judgment to make AI useful inside a specific enterprise context. That layer didn’t exist three years ago. It’s now one of the fastest-growing parts of the labor market.”

For all PYMNTS AI coverage, subscribe to the daily AI Newsletter.