Since the boom in ChatGPT, fears have been running high: will many jobs be taken over by artificial intelligence in the future? At the payment service provider Klarna, this fear is already becoming reality. Founder Siemiatkowski imposes a hiring freeze.
The ranks are thinning in Klarna’s offices. The Swedish payment service provider recently imposed a hiring freeze because artificial intelligence is taking over more and more tasks. This means that the fintech is realizing what many AI critics have been warning about since the ChatGPT boom.
According to Klarna founder and CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski, the Swedish payment provider could shrink by up to 1,000 employees in the coming year. „We see that we will be able to offer more and higher quality products in the future with fewer employees,“ the founder told RTL/ntv. No redundancies are planned, but no new employees will be hired and hardly any positions will be filled.
According to Siemiatkowski, 15 to 20 percent of employees leave the company every year. „As we are now stopping recruiting, we will probably automatically shrink by this amount.“ For the coming year, this would mean that up to 1,000 positions will not be filled. According to Klarna, the company currently employs around 5,000 people.
Siemiatkowski anticipates massive upheaval for the entire labor market. „The typical answer that AI will also create new jobs is too simple, the changes are just too big for that. And I think we need to offer something to the people who will be affected.“ Europe must take a leading role when it comes to exploring the opportunities of AI. When asked about his own responsibility, Siemiatkowski said that Klarna could possibly pay higher wages in the future because AI increases efficiency.
According to McKinsey experts, Germany has a solid foundation to take on a leading role in AI in Europe or even worldwide. „Europe needs local driving forces in a pan-European network in order to jointly shape the transformative power of GenAI and not lose touch with the USA and China,“ says Gérard Richter, Head of McKinsey Digital in Germany and Europe. However, there is a lack of investment in AI in Germany, say the authors of the study. „Germany is an entrepreneurial but underfunded country with great potential to take on a leading role in Europe.“
According to the Federal Statistical Office, one in eight companies in Germany is already using AI. This means that AI is used far more frequently in large companies with at least 250 employees than in small and medium-sized enterprises. It is already being used in just over one in three large companies (35%), but only in one in six medium-sized companies (16%) with 50 to 249 employees. In smaller companies with ten to 49 employees, the proportion is only ten percent.
Source: NTV-Germany