Axios House at the World Economic Forum 2024: AI’s Impact on the Workforce, Now and in the Future

The big picture: Axios House hosted an evening reception as part of a week of event programming held during the 2024 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. On Monday, January 15, Axios chief economic correspondent Neil Irwin hosted conversations with Salesforce AI CEO Clara Shih and Multiverse founder and CEO Euan Blair on how the rise of AI is impacting the workforce.

What they're saying: Clara Shih and Euan Blair discussed how AI will change the nature of many jobs moving forward and that while many workers have fears of displacement, the technology can be a helpful tool for employees to help automate certain tasks.

• Clara Shih pointed out that she thinks there will be short, medium and long-term effects of AI on the job market and employee workflows. "Long run, just like with the internet, there will be some jobs that get displaced, most jobs will get reinvented, and there will be new categories of work that get created that we can't even imagine right now," Shih said.
• "We've seen with every big sort of technological leap forward, jobs change and jobs be displaced. The problem historically is that those least able to bear the burden have suffered most, certainly in the short term," Euan said. "But if we stop focusing on cure, and instead look at prevention, basically we start skilling in advance, training people ... We can actually do something really great."

Sponsored content:

In a View From the Top sponsored segment, HP Inc. president and CEO Enrique Lores also emphasized the need to train the workforce to adapt and thrive amidst these significant technological changes.

• "We also need to manage the transition in an effective way, and this is where training and upskilling is going to be so important, because change is going to be fast, it's going to be one of the fastest changes that I think has happened in a long time, and we need to get our teams ready for that."

Thank you to HP Inc. for sponsoring this event.