-
Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski spoke about AI and the workforce.
-
Siemiatkowski said AI “can already do all the work” that humans do.
-
He said Klarna stopped hiring a year ago despite the company posting jobs online.
Sebastian Siemiatkowski, CEO of Klarna is all-in on artificial intelligence at the fintech company.
In an interview with Bloomberg TV, Siemiatkowski said he is “of the opinion that AI can already do all the jobs that we do as humans.”
“It’s just about how we apply it and use it,” he said.
Klarna is a payments service that offers consumers “buy now, pay later” options. According to its website, the company is connected to more than 575,000 retailers.
Growing attention to AI has sparked concerns about its impact on careers and the workplace. A 2023 report from McKinsey & Company estimates that 12 million American workers are expected to change career by 2030 as AI technology develops.
During the interview, Siemiatkowski said Klarna stopped hiring last year.
“I think what we’ve done internally hasn’t been as widely reported. We stopped recruiting about a year ago, so there were 4,500 of us, and now we’re 3,500,” Siemiatkowski said. “We have a natural attrition phenomenon, like any technology company. People stay for about five years, so 20% leave each year. By not hiring, we’re just shrinking, right?”
Siemiatkowski said his company told employees that “what’s going to happen is that Klarna’s total salary cost will go down, but part of the gain will be visible on your salary.”
Although Klarna’s website advertises open positions at the time of writing, a spokesperson told Business Insider that the company is not “actively recruiting” to increase its headcount. Instead, the spokesperson said, Klarna fills “some critical roles,” primarily in engineering.
Read the original article on Business Insider