Soumit Shah, the CEO of an e-commerce company, announced that he has replaced most of the support staff with an automated chat program, confirming that copy-paste jobs are now a thing of the past thanks to the advancement of artificial intelligence.
As reported on “Business Insider”, Shah, the CEO of the India-based company Dukan, stated: “This task is over.”
Shah referred to customer service employees who mainly copy and paste responses. However, he later clarified by stating that not all customer service employees need to worry about being replaced.
He expressed, saying: “It wasn’t rational for me to replace the whole team with a robot, even though it’s a hundred times smarter and instantly efficient.”
Shah’s announcements sparked widespread controversy when he tweeted that he had fired 90% of his customer support staff and replaced them with a chat program he considered superior.
Shah wrote in his post, which was viewed over 2.7 million times on the platform: “We had to let go of 90% of our support team because of this automated chat program, is it tough? Yes. Is it necessary? Absolutely.”
His post garnered a strong reaction on the formerly known platform Twitter, and a user wrote: “Don’t get it wrong, the support team here was laid off because of work failure and funding cuts, not because of artificial intelligence.”
Shah told Insider that the employee separations occurred in September of the previous year, leading to 23 out of 26 customer support team members losing their jobs.
He also added at that time that while he regretted starting a dialogue about layoffs on Twitter, he has not wavered from his firm stance.
He said: “Artificial Intelligence will take over our jobs,” further adding, “Over time, everyone will do this, it’s not just about us, it has reached a level of impact where I share it on Twitter.”
The CEO informed Insider via email that business has grown since July after implementing the decision, stating: “Our customer service team is now smaller but much more efficient… As for the budget, let’s just say we have reallocated those funds to support innovation and expansion.”
Concerns are increasing about the job displacement caused by artificial intelligence, with a report from Goldman Sachs in May indicating that about 300 million job opportunities worldwide could be disrupted by technology.
Despite this, not everyone agrees with Shah’s views, as tech leaders like Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, and Arvind Krishna, CEO of IBM, have previously stated that they believe artificial intelligence will create more job opportunities than it eliminates.
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