First things first, for better than a quarter century, we have been (and remain) Committed Capitalists, with a capital “C”… think stock options, profit sharing, entrepreneurship, Management Incentive Compensation… all of it.  That said…

“The Fact That You Can Whack 300 Heads via AI Doesn’t Mean That You Should”

Somewhere along the way, though, we (many of us) seem of late to be taking leave of our senses, or at least some portion of them. Lately, it happens most often when the terms, ”AI” and “staff” or “headcount” come into the picture, often in the same sentence. “AI is good, people (headcount in ‘beancounterese’) are bad.” We see it manifest daily in the business press in the form of analyst or senior management projections, lauding x heads to be whacked resultant from the new grim reaper, AI, at ACME Widget Corp.

But with AI largely premised as a human time and labor-saving device, that’s the way it’s supposed to be, isn’t it? 

Kinda. If AI is going to subsume the work currently being performed by John and Misty, it stands to reason that we don’t need them any longer, right?……………………… Maybe. To be sure, if a learned machine can reliably perform the same work better, faster, and cheaper, there’s a solid case to be made that the work might be best ported to the belchfire device.

The notion that we take issue with is that, by virtue of that condition, John and Misty must leave. Too often, that seems to be the operative logic; which we take issue with. It may be quite possible that the work currently being done by two humans can be ported to the grim reaper, and the humans “set free” to ply their talents elsewhere; “elsewhere” may, in some (many?) cases be right here, in different higher value, and perhaps hard to fill assignments.

               Consider this:  By virtue of their incumbency, we already know something about Misty and John, their skills, knowledge base, work ethic, team dynamic, ability to learn and adapt; etc. One or both of them may be ideal candidates for other hard to fill positions in the organization. Why not give it a go?

               Look, we’re not saying that you mustn’t reduce payroll expense when able, but let’s be sensible; and if we’ve got some valuable workers who’ve already proven that they fit this environment, and are good workers, why not at least consider a sensible reassignment before putting people in the woodchipper?