Only 11% of business leaders see AI leading to major job cuts – for now

Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google.

ZDNET’s key takeaways

• Most businesses don’t anticipate AI-fueled layoffs, survey finds.
• Some tech leaders say AI could automate a huge number of jobs.
• AI upskilling is becoming “a necessity,” Creatio writes.

Worried about AI taking your job? Fear not: new research suggests that most business leaders aren’t planning on replacing their employees with machines — not many of them, anyway.

Also: Nearly everything you’ve heard about AI and job cuts is wrong – here’s why

According to a recent survey from customer relationship management (CRM) platform Creatio, only 11% of executives believe that their organizations’ adoption of AI tools will lead to “significant headcount reductions.” The vast majority (83%) said that new AI systems, and specifically agents, will provide extra support to current employees and even possibly create new roles.

Collaboration vs. replacement

Echoing what’s become a common marketing refrain from tech developers selling AI agents, Creatio says that the results of its new survey indicate that the technology will help automate routine tasks, freeing human workers up so that they can focus on more meaningful work. 

Some tech companies have begun to explicitly lean into that element of human-AI collaboration in their efforts to sell their products to enterprise clients. On Thursday, for example, Asana announced the beta launch of a new suite of agents called AI Teammates, which are designed, like many other agents, to act as virtual coworkers.

Also: Your coworkers are sick of your AI workslop

Creatio’s report — which was based on a survey of over 550 business “decision-makers” — arrives on the heels of a study conducted by Indeed that analyzed the impact of new AI tools on specific skills listed in job postings, and found that the technology will probably shift the requirements of many roles more often than it replaces roles entirely.

Predictions and fears

Some prominent figures in the tech industry have predicted that AI could soon replace a large amount of human workers across various industries. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, for example, said in May that the technology could eliminate half of all white-collar jobs within the next five years. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has written that it could cause “whole classes of jobs” to disappear.

Also: Your next job? Managing a fleet of AI agents

Little wonder, then, that fears of AI-driven layoffs are so widespread. According to a recent poll conducted by Reuters and Ipsos, over 70% of U.S. adults are worried about the technology’s future impact on the job market. A recent LinkedIn study found that, under AI upskilling pressure, many workers are lying about their skills with the technology in order to feel competitive. AI has also cut the number of engineering jobs available to recent grads, for example. 

Upskill with caution

AI is still in its infancy, which means it’s still too soon to say with certainty whether or not widespread, Industrial Revolution-scale job displacement will occur in the future. 

Also: AI helps strong dev teams and hurts weak ones, according to Google’s 2025 DORA report

For the time being, as Creatio’s new survey suggests, business leaders would be well-advised to focus their efforts on training their current employees to productively use AI. 

“Upskilling will move from a nice-to-have to a necessity, as workers adapt to higher levels of output and broader responsibilities,” the company writes in its report. One of the challenges of that process of adaptation could be burnout, as one recent study found a correlation between heavier usage of AI at work and stress.