IBM CEO warns AI could wipe out 'many' jobs within 5 years

As artificial intelligence develops at an unprecedented pace, its potential impacts on humanity are not fully understood prompting some to issue doomsday warnings and others to champion the role AI could play in everyday life. 

One tech CEO is speaking out about the potential economic impacts of AI, claiming the technology could wipe out "many jobs" in less than a decade.

"I do believe, and I’ve said this before, that A.I. is going to replace many clerical white collar jobs and that’s the kind which I expect A.I. will replace over the next five years," IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said in a FOX Business exclusive on "The Claman Countdown" Tuesday. 

Krishna was joined by SAP SE CEO Christian Klein to discuss a recent deal between the two companies. Announced Tuesday, IBM's Watson, a cognitive learning machine made famous after winning Jeopardy, will be embedded into SAP's business solutions. The deal marks a huge opportunity for making business more efficient but also raises questions about jobs. 

"AI can take over a lot of these [business] activities. So it's about cost avoidance," Klein said. "And then the second part is as long as you have a growing business and you are transforming your business, you need different skills. So this also allows you to re-skill your workforce, not to just cut your workforce, which is, I guess, also equally important."

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During an interview with Bloomberg, Krishna revealed he anticipates AI replacing 30% of IBM's non-customer-facing jobs over the next five years.

"I did say we have about 26,000 of those roles," Krishna told host Liz Claman. "We do want our company to grow. So as we grow, you would expect those to increase, so a big part of the decrease will be a lack of increase. Also, we have, as many people do, close to 10% attrition in the workforce."

A number of experts have already discussed the impact AI will have on jobs. Goldman Sachs warned in a March report that around the world, as many as 300 million jobs could be impacted by artificial intelligence automation, CNBC reported. 

Jobs across numerous fields could be replaced, according to the company ChatGPT. The tech company, which has sparked debate in recent months, said it could "potentially replace jobs that involve written communication," such as translation services and social media managers. 

"It’s not as simple as jobs go away," Krishna said. "The number of jobs though, perhaps in customer care, in coding, in business process, in developing artificial intelligence is going to increase so much that the net increase is going to be positive while there’s a movement from one area to the other and that by the way has been the nature of technology for 250 years. It takes away from some areas, but gives better in others."

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When asked what jobs could be replaced by AI broadly, ChatGPT said financial analysts and customer service representatives, among others, could potentially be replaced by AI in the future. 

Some examples specifically given by ChatGPT include transportation, manufacturing and financial services. Other industries that could be at risk include healthcare in which "AI can assist with diagnosing and treating patients, reducing the need for some healthcare workers" and journalism where "AI can generate news articles and summaries, potentially impacting jobs."

The Goldman Sachs report found that, while about two-thirds of U.S. jobs are exposed to some degree of AI-informed automation, the average number of tasks in the daily workload for a given job ranged between a quarter to one-half, leaving a significant amount of work for humans. 

"People who face up to our customers are going to be needed," Krishna said. "It's much more of the back office, you know, whether it is data entry, whether it's doing routine repetitive work. Those are the things that AI is going to help automate at least over the next decade."

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While not denying AI will cut jobs, Krishna noted there is still a need for human employees for more complex work.

The authors of the study echoed Krishna's comments that while broader adoption of AI tools could replace some jobs, the increased productivity and economic output could lead to the creation of new types of jobs spawned by the wave of innovation, like how the rise of information technology created several new professions like internet marketers and web designers.

FOX Business' Eric Revell, Kendall Tietz and Bradford Betz contributed to this report.