CEO of $248 billion cybersecurity company says workers are about to face a ‘Darwinian moment’ thanks to AI: Evolve or get cut

Summary

As AI automates routine tasks and redefines entire roles , the tools are creating a new workplace survival test—one where workers must evolve, or risk being left in the dust. Hiring has screeched to a halt as companies slash thousands of staffers in the name of AI—and tech-savvy talent will have the best shot at career success. And some businesses have pushed ahead with big workforce cuts; Brian Armstrong ’s Coinbase , Jack Dorsey ’s Block , and Matthew Prince’s Cloudflare have all issued sweeping layoffs connected to AI. “Now, you’ve seen people like Brian Armstrong and Jack Dorsey go out and say, ‘I’m going to decimate my organization, and I’m going to start building from scratch,’” the Palo Alto CEO said. “They’ve gone to some version of 30% [to] 40% less people, because they’ve figured out there’s no redemption. ‘I can’t train these people, I’m going to just find the people who are going to come in and help me do this stuff.’” 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’s hiring “only through” hackathons to bolster tech skills among his 21,000-strong workforce. In his eyes, everyone’s role could be impacted by the new tech—even admitting that his own CEO job is “one of the easier things” that AI could take over one day. And he echoes Pichai in also believing that his coveted, top job isn’t even safe from the AI shift. Heck, it’s coming for my job, too. This is a wake-up call,” Kaufman warned in an interview with Fortune earlier this year. If you’re not practicing, don’t preach…You can’t make AI a value on the wall and then not behave by it.” And while Nvidia billionaire Jensen Huang doesn’t personally believe that AI can replace his role, he does recognize that competition comes with tech-savvy talent . Instead of fretting over a chatbot or robot stepping on their toes, workers should be wary of their “toxenmaxxing” coworkers going full steam ahead. “It is unlikely most people will lose a job to AI,” Huang said during an interview at the Stanford Graduate School of Business earlier this year. “It is most likely that most people will lose their job to somebody who uses AI.