Companies are 'silent firing' to replace employees with AI. Here's what it means
Silent firing emerges as a trend among employers to pressure workers into quitting in an attempt to replace them with AI.
Amid rising workplace trends like “quiet quitting” and “rage applying”, a new fad called "silent firing" is on the rise to push employees to leave their roles.
Instead of letting their employees "quiet quit", employers are "silent firing" them by making the job requirements so hard that workers are forced to quit under pressure. Later these employees are replaced by artificial intelligence, the New York Post reported.
What is silent firing?
The trend has been at work at Amazon, claims George Kailas, the CEO of Prospero.Ai and Fast Company contributor. He said that Amazon is forcing employees to come into the office five days a week even though most of the employees are against the return-to-office policy. As a result, 73% of workers have considered quitting, one survey found.
Kailas said that research suggests that remote work boosts productivity but companies like Amazon are "silent firing" workers by enforcing such policies. Such moves "decrease retention while saving on severance", he said.
Such drastic moves come at a time when AI adoption is still in its nascent stage and it is not known what jobs AI can replace and to what extent.
(Also read: Zuckerberg fires Meta employees making 6 figures for misusing free meal vouchers)
Can AI truly replace workers?
Economist and MIT professor Daron Acemoglu has claimed that only 5% of jobs can be replaced or assisted by AI within the next 10 years.
"A lot of money is going to get wasted. You're not going to get an economic revolution out of that 5%. You need highly reliable information or the ability of these models to faithfully implement certain steps that previously workers were doing," he told Bloomberg, adding that the technology is not going to be advanced enough anytime soon.
Worries about AI taking over jobs is on the rise even as Gen Z employees complain about poor work-life balance and growing income inequalities. Another workplace trend named the "Great Detachment", a play on the Great Depression, refers to a drop in employee engagement as more and more workers grow dissatisfied of their work.
Data suggested that Gen Z and young millennials have decreased engagement by 5% at work even as an estimated three in 10 employees are not actively engaged at work. (Also read: 'I feel embarrassed': Vice president fired from company after getting 25% bonus)
