Klarna Halts Job Openings in Favor of AI Workers

Swedish fintech Klarna will be pausing its job opening beyond engineers, citing "productivity gains" from AI tools.

Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski expects "a shrinking in the company" following the decision to rely more on ChatGPT rather than on human workers.

The chief executive said the online market app will earn more with "fewer people to do the same thing." Siemiatkowski did not specify which jobs are closing down but hopes to build more customer service features in the app.

Siemiatkowski, however, cleared that Klarna is not planning any layoffs soon but just refraining from active recruitments.

Klarna previously laid off 10% of the company last May following an economic slump for the company.

Increasing Company Layoffs and Fear of AI Replacement

Klarna is not the only tech service recently announcing a hiring freeze in favor of AI tools to cut down production expenses.

IBM announced in May that it is pausing hiring for non-customer-facing roles, or 30% of the company's workforce, to be replaced by AI workers over five years.

The tech firm also laid off 1.5% of its 260,000 employees earlier this year.

File hosting service Dropbox also decided to reduce its workforce by 16%, or 500 employees, last April to "strategically reinvest" on AI-integrated "early-stage product development."

Workers fear that AI may soon fully replace people from their jobs.

Threat of AI in the Workforce

The growing capabilities of AI tools like ChatGPT only serve to increase people's dislike of AI improvements.

To placate people's fears, some companies like AT&T introduced their own AI tools to help employees, particularly coders and software developers, with their work.

Siemiatkowski agreed that the fast growth of AI could be "a threat to a lot of jobs" across the economy.