DBS Group expects a 10% reduction in its workforce in the next three years as artificial intelligence adoption goes deeper into the operations, its chief executive Piyush Gupta said on Monday.
Gupta said AI is different and unlike any other technologies adopted in the past and added that he is struggling to create new jobs for the first time in his over 15-year stint at the helm of the Singapore-based bank. “This year, my current projection is that in the next three years, we are going to shrink our workforce by 4,000 or 10%,” Gupta said at a Nasscom event in Mumbai. Gupta added, “AI is very powerful. It can self-create and also mimick.” Gupta said in the last 10 years, there have not been any job cuts in the group.
He reminisced that in 2016-17, the bank embarked on a digital transformation which was seen impacting 1,600 people but added that almost all of them were repurposed in consultation with the unions and other representatives.
However, the current challenge in the age of AI is also revolving around how to repurpose the workforce. The bank has been cautious about relying fully on AI when it comes to customer outreach because of aspects like hallucinations but added that it has done first use case on reaching customer directly and plans to broadbase it by end of the year. DBS started implementing generative AI solutions two years back, and the entire benefits of generative AI are yet to be seen, Gupta said.