With the rise of artificial intelligence, there is constant debate about whether current industry excitement will fade when it replaces many of the jobs done by humans.
One recent survey found that nearly half of Americans fear that ChatGPT and other similar platforms will eventually make it harder for them to find work. The chatbot platform that soared in popularity at the end of 2022 comes closest in generating writing that resembles a human voice.
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While the World Economic Forum did estimate that over 85 million jobs could be lost to AI by 2025, technology is also creeping into layoffs in a much more subtle way.
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Think That Termination Letter Was Written By a Human? It Might Have Been ChatGPT
In a survey of 213 HR professionals and 792 workers in the tech industry done by B2B Reviews, one in ten human resources leaders admitted to using ChatGPT to craft a termination letter to an employee slated for a layoff.
Half have used it for other daily tasks on the job and, on average, reported saving 70 minutes a week through the platform.
The survey looked at larger issues around employee satisfaction in the tech industry and found unnerving results — nearly 40% do not feel that they can confidently come to HR with a problem while one in 10 described their current company culture as "toxic."
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As the tech industry deals with an onslaught of layoffs and austerity measures amid a looming recession, the most common complaints to HR include increased workload and late or incorrect paychecks. A respective 31% and 20% of complaints filed were about the latter while skills lost to layoffs was another common worry.
"The most important expectations tech employees have for HR when handling layoffs are transparency about workplace changes (57%), fair and unbiased treatment (47%), and monthly updates surrounding layoff plans (27%)," write the study's authors.
One in 10 of the polled employees reported filing an official complaint with HR in the last year.
Amid Shadow Of Layoffs, Workers Still Cautiously Embrace AI
While ChatGPT is often used to speed up certain tasks that the employee then goes over manually, using it too much sometimes brings forth accusations of creating an "impersonal" culture or product.
When asked what changes they would make if they were in HR, 51% of workers in the BNB Reviews survey said that they would improve transparency while an additional 36% wished to see better communication. On the other end, 21% would streamline certain processes around contacting HR or filing a complaint — speeding up tasks currently done manually is what artificial intelligence is most often used for.
Given how widespread layoffs currently are in the tech industry (tracker sites report that 784 tech companies laid off nearly 210,000 workers in 2023), many termination letters will inevitably be recycled and not as personal as they were in different times.
Expectations around what is considered cold and what is simply business are also changing. At the end of 2021, Better.com CEO Vishal Garg caused outrage by terminating over 900 employees in a single Zoom (ZTNO) call. The move prompted an exodus of executives who left in protest while Garg refused calls to resign and still leads the mortgage services platform.
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