Verizon’s CEO wants his contemporaries to be open about artificial intelligence-related job losses. “It’s a very difficult time, and everyone knows it is,” Dan Schulman said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) published Sunday (April 19). “So I think being authentic, being realistic, telling the truth, as best you can” is crucial. He added that this belief is why the telecom launched a $20 million career-transition and retraining fund for the “age of AI” when the company began cutting 13,000 jobs last year. “Change is necessary, but it can be difficult,” Schulman, former CEO of PayPal wrote in a message to workers at the time. The WSJ characterizes these warnings as a departure from the chief executives at other public companies: excited about AI’s potential but reluctant to discuss the idea of job cuts. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, for example, told CNBC in February that while some roles will be replaced, “there will be other jobs created.” However, the report noted, several companies have mentioned AI as they initiated sweeping job cuts. Block, for example, cut close to half its staff earlier this year and predicted other firms would take the same path. The WSJ also cited a Boston Consulting Group report that predicts that AI will reshape around half of U.S. jobs in two to three years, with 15% ultimately being eliminated. The report also describes Schulman recommending to staff to use AI to write an obituary to see how it describes their lives, or to…
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