Executives’ growing willingness to say publicly that they are forgoing hiring in favor of artificial intelligence might be a sign of the times. Businesses are facing more uncertainty than they have in years, with tariff-related disruptions and a broader stock market pullback since the start of this year. As my colleague Aaron Holmes reported today, companies like PayPal, United Wholesale Mortgage and Shopify say they plan to use AI to fill roles humans would otherwise have fulfilled, if not lay off staff.
Apr 17, 2025
Applied AI
By Jon Victor
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Executives’ growing willingness to say publicly that they are forgoing hiring in favor of artificial intelligence might be a sign of the times. Businesses are facing more uncertainty than they have in years, with tariff-related disruptions and a broader stock market pullback since the start of this year.
As my colleague Aaron Holmes reported today, companies like PayPal, United Wholesale Mortgage and Shopify say they plan to use AI to fill roles humans would otherwise have fulfilled, if not lay off staff.
AI’s squeeze on the job market won’t be evenly spread out. Our reporting suggests that while businesses have widely adopted AI for some roles, many highly anticipated uses remain experimental. For example, AI is already common in customer support and data analysis, but it could be a while before the technology can reliably navigate websites to submit job applications or can manage an investment portfolio on its own.
In the chart below, we list 30 different examples of AI in the enterprise, grouped by how often we’re hearing buyers use them:
Tasks on the experimental end of the spectrum—such as providing investment advice or completing advanced coding assignments like building an app from scratch with few instructions—tend to rely on more sophisticated reasoning. Companies like OpenAI, which yesterday announced a new set of models with improved reasoning abilities, are racing to automate those roles, but it will take time to make that work in practice.
In the meantime, weakening economic conditions could leave some companies scrambling to use AI to cut costs, said Eric Berridge, CEO of consulting firm Coastal. His company helps businesses use Salesforce products including Agentforce, which some customers have rolled out with mixed success for tasks like customer support and IT help.
“If we are in a moment of macrocorrection, it will accelerate AI investments in the coming months or years, because organizations are going to see the need for more efficiency,” Berridge said.
Testing AI, Not Scaling It
So far, data from KPMG suggests that AI usage at large companies has rarely been making it past the pilot stage. According to the firm’s quarterly survey of 130 American business leaders at companies with more than $1 billion in annual revenue, the share of companies introducing AI beyond a pilot program has remained stagnant, even though more businesses than ever are experimenting with the technology.
Just 14 of the respondents, or 11%, said they are making AI agents, or chatbots that can take actions such as booking meetings, broadly available to employees as of the first quarter, the same as last quarter. Nearly two-thirds of respondents said they have ongoing pilot programs, up from 37% of people surveyed in the fourth quarter last year.
KPMG’s figures on how companies are using AI for different roles align with our own findings. For example, 61% of companies are using AI to handle customer support calls, and 78% are using it to analyze complex datasets, according to the report. Around one-quarter of firms are using it to contact candidates about job opportunities.
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