Microsoft to cut 9,000 jobs as chatbots take over

Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief executive, says 30pc of the company’s code is now being written by AI - Kin Cheung/AP

Microsoft is cutting 9,000 jobs as executives order staff to delegate more work to artificial intelligence (AI).

The $3.6 trillion (£2.7 trillion) technology giant will shed 4pc of its workforce, it confirmed on Wednesday, with redundancies hitting divisions including its Xbox arm and King, its mobile games studio.

The job losses follow a round of cutbacks in May, when Microsoft laid off 6,000 staff including hundreds of middle-managers and engineering roles.

The technology business had more than 228,000 employees at the end of its last fiscal year.

“We continue to implement organisational changes necessary to best position the company and teams for success in a dynamic marketplace,” a Microsoft spokesman said.

The cuts come after Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief executive, claimed that up to 30pc of the company’s code was now being written by AI bots. Executives have been pushing staff to adopt more AI tools to speed up their work.

Julia Liuson, the president of Microsoft’s developer division, recently told managers to consider whether an employee was using AI enough as part of their performance reviews, according to Business Insider.

“Using AI is no longer optional,” she said in an email. “It’s core to every role and every level. AI should be part of your holistic reflections on an individual’s performance and impact.”

Threat to entry-level jobs

The job cuts come amid growing fears that entry-level and engineering roles risk being replaced by AI bots. Tools such as ChatGPT can write emails or reports in plain English, generate code or create graphics and pictures.

While tech executives have promised AI will help create more jobs than it destroys, there are already signs that some roles are disappearing from the jobs market.

Software vacancies have fallen sharply since ChatGPT was released in November 2022. Executives are increasingly demanding programmers augment their roles with AI bots that can generate code themselves.

The Telegraph reported this week that entry-level jobs in the UK were down by a third since the launch of ChatGPT.

A report from Github, which is owned by Microsoft, found 50pc of developers had embraced “AI-assisted” coding.

Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder, said he expected AI to be able to do the work of a “mid-level engineer” this year.

Tech giants are investing hundreds of billions of dollars in AI products and infrastructure at the same time as cutting jobs. In January, Microsoft said it expected to spend $80bn on AI technology this year.

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