Human Touch: Companies Find AI Can't Replace Everyone

We've read and heard repeatedly about the threat of artificial intelligence (AI) replacing human jobs. And that threat has proven true for many workers. But an interesting thing is happening now---many of those jobs lost to AI are coming back. CNBC recently reported on a phenomenon some are calling "AI rebounding," where companies that cut workers due to AI are now offering to hire them back. The report cites a survey from earlier this year that found about one-third of companies that let employees go because of AI have since had to rehire, including major firms like Amazon.

Todd Furniss, CEO of AIAI Holdings (NASDAQ: AIAI), says too many companies jumped the gun thinking AI was a quick fix to save money. "The problem is when people leave, (companies) have no supervision over what the AI is doing, which means the guardrails have been taken off, but they haven't done it thoughtfully or intentionally," he tells KTRH. "So now you end up with even more problems: you have business process problems, and you have loss of institutional knowledge and no way to recover, because the people who know what's going on are no longer available."

Companies are also finding out that simply hiring back the workers they let go is not that easy. Many of the employees are demanding more pay or assurances of job security before they will even consider coming back. "That's where you have a cultural dilemma as well," says Furniss. "Because the very people you just fired went through the emotional challenge of having been terminated, and their co-workers saw it happen, and now there's an entire dislocation inside the company."

Furniss believes that if harnessed correctly, AI can be beneficial to both workers and companies, and not the bogeyman that some have made it out to be. But businesses cannot treat it as a catch-all replacement for all human skills. "A lot of businesses are putting in place temporary solutions they think are permanent, and that's going to cause problems," he says. "You have to be very thoughtful about this. For most companies, they run the risk of not knowing how to execute without human input, and by focusing only on cost-cutting they are really risking the company's future."