As IBM Pushes For More Automation, Its AI Simply Not Up To the Job of Replacing Staff

An anonymous reader shares a report: IBM's plan to replace thousands of roles with AI presently looks more like outsourcing jobs to India, at the expense of organizational competency. That view of Big Blue was offered to The Register after our report on the IT giant's latest layoffs, which resonated so strongly with several IBM employees that they contacted The Register with thoughts on the job cuts. Our sources have asked not to be identified to protect their ongoing relationships with Big Blue. Suffice to say they were or are employed as senior technologists in business units that span multiple locations and were privy to company communications: These are not views from the narrow entrance to a single cubicle. We're going to refer to three by the pseudonyms Alex, Blake, and Casey.

'I always make this joke about IBM,' said Alex. 'It is: 'IBM doesn't want people to work for them.' Every six months or so they are doing rounds of [Resource Actions -- IBM-speak for layoffs] or forcing folks into impossible moves, which result in separation.' That's consistent with CEO Arvind Krishna's commitment last year to replace around 7,800 jobs with AI. But our sources say Krishna's plan is on shaky ground: IBM's AI isn't up to the job of replacing people, and some of the people who could fix that have been let go. Alex observed that over the past four years, IBM management has constantly pushed for automation and the use of AI. 'With AI tools writing that code for us... why pay for senior-level staff when you can promote a youngster who doesn't really know any better at a much lower price?' he said. 'Plus, once you have a seasoned programmer write code that is by law the company's IP and it is fed into an AI library, it basically learns it and the author is no longer needed.' But our sources tell us that scenario has yet to be realized inside IBM.

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