{"id":774201,"date":"2026-07-01T22:34:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T22:34:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/774201\/"},"modified":"2026-07-01T22:34:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T22:34:14","slug":"ceo-of-248-billion-cybersecurity-firm-says-workers-face-a-darwinian-moment-thanks-to-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/774201\/","title":{"rendered":"CEO of $248 billion cybersecurity firm says workers face a \u2018Darwinian moment\u2019 thanks to AI"},"content":{"rendered":"

As AI automates routine tasks<\/a> and redefines entire roles<\/a>, the tools are creating a new workplace survival test\u2014one where workers must evolve, or risk being left in the dust. Palo Alto Networks<\/a> CEO Nikesh Arora warns that 90% of employees at big companies aren\u2019t AI savvy\u2014and it could determine the fate of their careers in the new world.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we\u2019re back to a Darwinian moment where everybody has to figure out who\u2019s really good,\u201d Arora said recently during an episode of the 20VC<\/a> podcast.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201c[Workers] have to learn. I can\u2019t send them to university; there\u2019s no course you can take in any school anywhere,\u201d he added. \u201cThey have to be able to learn on their own.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

And the leader of the $278 billion cybersecurity firm is already witnessing the fallout. Hiring has screeched to a halt<\/a> as companies slash thousands of staffers<\/a> in the name of AI\u2014and tech-savvy talent will have the best shot at career success.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nearly 40% of employers are slashing staffers\u2014and he\u2019s recruiting at hackathons<\/p>\n

It\u2019s estimated that 39% of business leaders have already made employees redundant due to leveraging AI, according to<\/a> a 2025 Orgvue study.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And some businesses have pushed ahead with big workforce cuts; Brian Armstrong<\/a>\u2019s Coinbase<\/a>, Jack Dorsey<\/a>\u2019s Block<\/a>, and Matthew Prince\u2019s Cloudflare<\/a> have all issued sweeping layoffs<\/a> connected to AI.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, you\u2019ve seen people like Brian Armstrong and Jack Dorsey go out and say, \u2018I\u2019m going to decimate my organization, and I\u2019m going to start building from scratch,\u2019\u201d the Palo Alto CEO said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve gone to some version of 30% [to] 40% less people, because they\u2019ve figured out there\u2019s no redemption. \u2018I can\u2019t train these people, I\u2019m going to just find the people who are going to come in and help me do this stuff.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The other way employers are broaching the issue is by gradually rebuilding their teams with AI-fluent workers. In leading Palo Alto into the next era, Arora says he\u2019s hiring \u201conly through\u201d hackathons to bolster tech skills among his 21,000-strong workforce.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The CEO is letting natural attrition run its course\u2014with around 2% of employees leaving each month\u2014then replaces them with workers who have proven their AI chops.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe hire from hackathons. Give me 12 months, [and] I\u2019ll have transformed 20% [to] 25% of my team,\u201d Arora said. \u201cGive me 3 years, I\u2019ll have hopefully enough AI savvy people working at Palo Alto.\u201d<\/p>\n

CEOs say it\u2019s sink or swim in the AI era\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Palo Alto CEO\u2019s forecast reflects a growing concern among business leaders: the AI era will be a sink-or-swim moment for workers, with adaptability becoming the new career currency. No one is immune from the tech transformation\u2014not even the CEOs calling the shots.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Google<\/a> leader Sundar Pichai<\/a> has cautioned that no career path is fully protected from AI\u2019s disruption, advising professionals to take matters into their own<\/a> hands.<\/p>\n

In his eyes, everyone\u2019s role could be impacted by the new tech\u2014even admitting that his own CEO job is \u201cone of the easier things\u201d that AI could take over one day. Pichai emphasized that the tools will create new work opportunities, but also admitted that some roles will be phased out. People have to take initiative themselves to adapt accordingly<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople will need to adapt, and then there will be areas where it will impact some jobs. So, as a society, I think we need to be having those conversations,\u201d Pichai told the BBC<\/a> in a 2025 interview.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think people who learn to adopt and adapt to AI will do better,\u201d the CEO continued. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter whether you want to be a teacher, a doctor\u2014all those professions will be around, but the people who will do well in each of those professions are people who learn how to use these tools.\u201d<\/p>\n

Micha Kaufman<\/a>, the CEO of freelance marketplace Fiverr<\/a>, also issued a warning to professionals: the tech is changing and automating<\/a> every single role, all the way up to C-suite. And he echoes Pichai in also believing that his coveted, top job isn\u2019t even safe from the AI shift. It\u2019s essential that employees do more than simply talk about the tech\u2014they need to experiment with it, develop their skills, and make it part of their everyday work.<\/p>\n

\u201cAI is coming for your jobs. Heck, it\u2019s coming for my job, too. This is a wake-up call,\u201d Kaufman warned in an interview with<\/a> Fortune earlier this year. A year on, he has a message for the C-suite trying to ride out the AI tsunami: \u201cDon\u2019t be a cheerleader. If you\u2019re not practicing, don\u2019t preach\u2026You can\u2019t make AI a value on the wall and then not behave by it.\u201d<\/p>\n

And while Nvidia<\/a> billionaire Jensen Huang<\/a> doesn\u2019t personally believe that AI can replace his role, he does recognize that competition comes with tech-savvy talent<\/a>. Instead of fretting over a chatbot or robot stepping on their toes, workers should be wary of their \u201ctoxenmaxxing\u201d coworkers going full steam ahead.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is unlikely most people will lose a job to AI,\u201d Huang said during an interview<\/a> at the Stanford Graduate School of Business earlier this year. \u201cIt is most likely that most people will lose their job to somebody who uses AI. And so we have to make sure that everybody uses AI.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As AI automates routine tasks and redefines entire roles, the tools are creating a new workplace survival test\u2014one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":774202,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,14005,276,277,16014,28364,45,49,48,2925,5244,2926,7343,2443,192,12169,200544,8189,124,15263,6494,274715,15376,22911,32018,37407,11835,61,2459],"class_list":["post-774201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-ai-agents","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-automation","tag-block","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-careers","tag-chatbots","tag-chief-executive-officer-ceo","tag-coinbase","tag-employment","tag-google","tag-hiring","tag-jack-dorsey","tag-jensen-huang","tag-jobs","tag-layoffs","tag-nvidia","tag-palo-alto-networks","tag-recruiting","tag-robots","tag-skills","tag-skills-gap","tag-sundar-pichai","tag-technology","tag-workers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=774201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774201\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/774202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=774201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=774201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=774201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}