IBM’s use of artificial intelligence has changed the company in ways few expected. In 2023, the company made headlines for cutting about 8,000 jobs, mostly from its human resources department. But just a year later, IBM’s total workforce actually grew.
According to CEO Arvind Krishna, artificial intelligence helped the company save money, boost efficiency, and reinvest in new areas such as cloud computing, cybersecurity, and enterprise automation.
Speaking to The Wall Street Journal, Krishna explained that automation was never just about replacing people. “Our total employment has gone up,” he said. “AI lets us redirect investment into areas that need human touch such as software engineering, sales, and marketing.” His comments reflect a growing belief in the tech world that artificial intelligence isn’t just taking jobs away, it’s reshaping them for the future.
IBM’s transformation began with the launch of its own AI-powered system called AskHR. The platform was created to handle routine human resource tasks like managing vacation requests, handling payroll, and processing employee documents. AskHR has proven incredibly successful. By 2024, it was handling about 94 percent of HR-related tasks and had logged more than 11.5 million interactions in a single year.
The results were impressive. IBM reported that its customer satisfaction rating, known as the Net Promoter Score, jumped from -35 to +74 one of the biggest improvements in its history. The company also said that the automation of HR processes led to a $3.5 billion improvement in overall efficiency, covering more than 70 job roles worldwide.
At first, the layoffs caused concern among employees. Many believed IBM was downsizing for good. But instead of shrinking, IBM started hiring again, this time, for more advanced roles that required creative thinking, decision-making, and technical expertise. Krishna explained that artificial intelligence gave IBM the opportunity to focus on work that “truly needs human intelligence.”
This shows that automation and employment can work together when handled carefully. IBM’s success came from treating AI not as a cost-cutting tool but as an investment in the future. The company moved away from repetitive work and redirected its attention toward high-skill roles in areas like software development, cloud architecture, and enterprise-level automation.
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IBM’s balanced approach also helped it avoid mistakes made by other companies. For example, Duolingo once tried replacing human tutors with AI chatbots, only to discover that users still wanted real teachers. The company had to rehire staff to meet customer expectations. IBM took a different route by recognizing that AI has limits. Even today, around six percent of HR-related queries at IBM still require human attention.
AskHR’s success came from this understanding. It was not a full replacement for human workers but a support system that made their jobs easier and more productive. This is what experts call “responsible automation.” It allows companies to use technology to improve performance without removing the human element that customers and employees value.
Today, IBM employs more than 270,000 people around the world. Many of these positions are in new, fast-growing areas like data science, AI engineering, and hybrid cloud computing. These are fields that rely heavily on human creativity and problem-solving — things machines can’t easily replicate.
