Today’s big topic: Executive replaces young people with AI. He himself fears it will become a problem
Halfdan Timm’s work has become much more enjoyable since his workplace, the marketing agency Obsidian, fully embraced artificial intelligence last year. But AI has replaced the hiring of newly graduated colleagues, and that could become a problem, he believes.
What’s happening?
Imagine no longer having to do 80 percent of the work your job requires. You would do only the fun parts – and still get paid the same. It sounds almost too good to be true, but it is not. At least not for Halfdan Timm. Over the past year, his work at the marketing agency Obsidian has been transformed completely. »Ai does most of what I would normally have to do myself«, said Halfdan Timm, 34, who co-founded Obsidian 10 years ago.
His current work – conducting the meeting and then adjusting the ai tool’s proposal afterward – makes up the first 10 percent and the last 10 percent of the time he used to spend on a task, he estimates. In other words, the ai does the remaining 80 percent of the work, and it does it well, he said.
Timm and his colleagues can now complete assignments so quickly that they can create a campaign for two companies in the time it used to take to create one, he said. But there is another consequence as well. The company is hiring fewer people - especially younger people.
Why it matters!
»Ai has taken over virtually all the work that recent graduates used to do for us. So we are hiring fewer recent graduates now than before. That means there are people who are no longer learning how to do this. And that is going to become a problem for society very soon«, Halfdan Timm says.
Obsidian reflects a broader trend. In Danish companies that have begun using artificial intelligence, the number of employees – especially younger ones – is rising more slowly than in other companies, according to an analysis from Denmark’s central bank last month.
The government is aware of the trend. Ane Halsboe-Jørgensen, the minister of employment, has asked her ministry to monitor how unemployment develops month by month, with particular attention to whether unemployment among young university graduates rises.
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In other news
– 5,000 pilots had personal information stolen in data breach at DMI
Several thousand pilots had their personal information compromised in connection with a data breach at the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI), that took place in late October, Ritzau reports. DMI disclosed this in an update on its website on Wednesday. The pilots affected by the leak are being notified of the incident, DMI wrote.
– The Danish C25 index closes at its highest level in two years
The index rose 1.82 percent over the course of Wednesday’s trading, leaving Denmark’s blue-chip index at 2,026.62 at the close. The previous record level, set two years ago, was 2,039.66, Ritzau reports. Wednesday’s gain came after a day of earnings reports from Danish C25 companies, including Pandora and Novo, which were among the day’s biggest winners, with share price gains of 10.9 percent and 5.5 percent, respectively.
Talk of town: Students take to the streets over a ’broken promise’: »I very much feel let down by politicians«
»It always ends up hurting young people,« says Frida Beyer, one of the many thousands of students who took to the streets on Wednesday to protest cuts to student grants.
Signs reading »Invest in my brain« and »Black money, free student grants« filled the streets of Copenhagen on Wednesday, as several thousand students demonstrated against cuts to the state student grant. From City Hall Square to Christiansborg Palace Square, students marched together to protest what they called the government’s »betrayal« in its new budget proposal.
Because it is not fair, Frida Beyer says, that politicians want to eliminate or cut the grant for thousands of students still living at home. She is 18, wearing a bright pink jacket, and is in her second year at Copenhagen Open Gymnasium.
Elliot Thiel, a second-year student at Christianshavn Gymnasium, strikes the same note: »They are screwing us over. Especially The Green Left and the Social Liberals. I voted for one of them because they said they were fighting for us. And then they just go in and change it. It feels like campaign-season empty promises – and that is the main reason I am here today«.
Still curious? Read the full article here.
This newsletter features stories originally published in Danish. AI was used to shorten and translate the articles into English, after which a member of the editorial staff reviewed and refined the content.