Swedish fintech company Karna boasted that it had stopped hiring for a yr through the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to exchange employees’ jobs.
Klarna CEO Sebastian Simiatkowski said in an interview with Bloomberg TV on the thirteenth (local time) that due to AI technology, the corporate has succeeded in automating tasks previously performed by a whole lot of employees, and has not needed to hire latest personnel for the past yr.
He said that the variety of employees has decreased by 22% from about 4,500 a yr ago to the present level of three,500 through natural attrition. He said that if no latest hires are made, a decrease within the variety of employees is a natural phenomenon, with 20% of employees leaving the corporate yearly. He added that the typical length of service is 5 years.
He also introduced that about 200 employees are actively utilizing AI to perform core tasks. Emphasizing that AI technology can effectively replace human work, he said, “I believe AI can already perform the whole lot that humans do.”
Specifically, it was explained that the AI assistant developed earlier this yr replaced the roles of 700 full-time customer support employees. Through this, the client inquiry repetition rate was reduced by 25%, and problem resolution time was also shortened from 11 minutes to lower than 2 minutes.
As well as, while total salary costs are decreasing, the corporate promised to return the advantages to employees through wage increases as productivity improves through AI.
Meanwhile, this company is legendary for its AI hype. By introducing generative AI, it was claimed that by the third quarter of this yr, it had saved $140 million (about 200 billion won) in comparison with last yr. For this reason, it was criticized as ‘groundless’.
Nonetheless, he added that hiring has not completely stopped. “While we usually are not actively recruiting to expand our workforce, we’re filling some essential positions, primarily in engineering,” an organization spokesperson said.
Reporter Park Chan cpark@aitimes.com
