Indian-American billionaire and Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora has delivered a blunt warning for white-collar workers: Artificial intelligence could wipe out nearly half of the jobs in marketing, finance and human resources over the next three years.<\/p>\n
Arora believes AI will dramatically reduce the number of employees required in general and administrative, or G&A, functions as intelligent systems take over more process-driven work.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy rule of thumb is that in the next three years, we\u2019ll probably have half the people in G&A-type activities in companies. Things like marketing, things like finance, things like HR,\u201d Arora said during a recent podcast.<\/p>\n
His reasoning is simple: Much of the work in these departments revolves around managing processes, and AI is becoming increasingly capable of handling those tasks faster and more intelligently.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of process management there. And a lot of process management can be made more intelligent using some version of an adapted future AI application,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
AI Will Not Just Assist \u2014 It Will Have An Opinion<\/p>\n
Arora, who was once among Google\u2019s highest-paid executives, believes the current software-as-a-service, or SaaS, era could eventually give way to a new generation of AI applications that are more autonomous and opinionated.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe difference being, SaaS applications have no opinion. AI applications will have opinions. And that\u2019s a fundamental rethink we need from a workflow perspective,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
To explain his point, Arora gave the example of an AI system reviewing marketing material.<\/p>\n
Such a system, he said, could effectively tell an employee: \u201cI looked at your copy, it sucks. It\u2019s not good enough. It\u2019s not consistent with the tone of your brand voice. Here\u2019s what I will recommend.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Arora, this would make the average employee far more productive than today.<\/p>\n
But there is a catch.<\/p>\n
Once AI starts doing much of the heavy lifting, companies may simply not need as many people.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen I don\u2019t need so many of them because they\u2019re doing most of the work for you,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Palo Alto Networks currently has around 600 employees in marketing, according to Arora.<\/p>\n
Which Jobs Could Actually Grow?<\/p>\n
Not every profession faces the same threat.<\/p>\n
Arora believes demand for technical talent and sales professionals could increase as AI advances.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf your product\u2019s really good, you need more people to go out there and cover the universe because not enough people know about it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He also expects workers who understand how to use AI effectively to become increasingly valuable.<\/p>\n
That, however, exposes another major problem.<\/p>\n
According to Arora, nearly 90% of enterprise employees are currently not AI-savvy.<\/p>\n
He urged workers to take responsibility for learning AI tools themselves rather than waiting for employers to train them.<\/p>\n
Over the next three years, Arora hopes Palo Alto Networks will have enough AI-savvy employees to compete in a rapidly changing business environment.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we\u2019re back to a Darwinian moment where everybody has to figure out who\u2019s really good,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Arora\u2019s warning comes at a time when companies across the world are restructuring their workforces around AI. Over the past two years, major employers including Meta, Amazon, Oracle and Cognizant have announced significant job cuts and organisational changes as automation and artificial intelligence reshape corporate operations.<\/p>\n
The message from the billionaire CEO is unmistakable: AI may not eliminate every job, but workers who fail to adapt could increasingly find themselves left behind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Indian-American billionaire and Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora has delivered a blunt warning for white-collar workers: Artificial…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":742258,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,295077,181,507,13360,4,122,52827,27304,295079,166,295075,295076,5984,149,54052,111,99,10354,74,169636,51000,78743,295078,5986,6615,295080,16541,6879,965],"class_list":["post-742257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-andhra-news","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-bollywood-news","tag-breaking-news","tag-business-news","tag-cricket-news","tag-current-news","tag-daily-telugu-news","tag-gadgets","tag-greatandhra","tag-greatandhra-news","tag-india-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-news-website","tag-politics","tag-sports","tag-tech-news","tag-technology","tag-telangana-news","tag-telugu-cinema","tag-telugu-movie-reviews","tag-telugu-news-paper","tag-today-news","tag-tollywood","tag-tollywood-movie-reviews","tag-video-news","tag-videos","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=742257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742257\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/742258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=742257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=742257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=742257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}