Sebastian Siemiatkowski, CEO of Klarna, a “buy now, pay later” financing business, has an explanation for his statement that AI can replace “all” vocations, including his own. In a post on X on Sunday, Siemiatkowski clarified his reasons for claiming that “AI is capable of performing every one of our jobs,” a remark he made last month that “caused quite a stir.”
Siemiatkowski remarked that AI needs more study and development before it can duplicate every job, but it has the raw potential to do so in the future.
He compared the statement to saying that human brains were capable of constructing vehicles, computers, and rockets 100 years ago, but it took decades of research and ingenuity to gather the basic elements to make a computer. Similarly, AI is now “capable of doing all our jobs, my own included,” Siemiatkowski added. “Siemiatkowski acknowledged that it will still take a long time to integrate and resolve all the elements of the knowledge base.”
In February, Klarna announced that 700 workers were employed in a comparable position in artificial intelligence client service. The company used a Siemiatkowski artificial intelligence clone to announce its most recent financial results at the end of December. To use AI to augment human labor, Klarna has also put a hiring freeze in place for more than a year. Siemiatkowski told Bloomberg last month that since the freeze began, more than 1,000 employees have departed Klarna, leaving 3,500 employees. The company has informed workers that “part of the gain of that is going to be seen” in their paychecks as Klarna’s compensation costs decline.