53% of IT leaders see AI replacing headcount — others question that approach

Some AI experts have downplayed the technology’s potential to replace employees and reduce payrolls, but many IT leaders have a different vision, with more than half saying they expect AI will enable their organizations to cut jobs.

Fifty-three percent of IT leaders surveyed for the 2025 AI Priorities Study from CIO.com parent company Foundry say they believe AI capabilities will enable reductions in their organizations’ workforces. The study also found that IT leaders currently see AI as more of an employee productivity tool than a driver of innovation.

The results of the study, particularly respondents’ views of AI as an employee replacement, surprised some IT leaders who still see AI as more of an assistant than a job stealer.

It’s an “oversimplification” to think of AI as purely a job replacement tool, says Brian Weiss, CTO at enterprise AI platform vendor Hyperscience. Some menial, manual, and repetitive tasks will be replaced or will evolve, but that’s nothing new with an emerging technology, he adds.

“Technology always takes over repetitive human tasks, that’s been true long before AI came on the scene,” Weiss says. “But history has shown that technology doesn’t just eliminate jobs; it creates new ones and opens up new frontiers.”

Reskilling employees for new roles

Weiss sees AI more as a workforce multiplier than a workforce reducer, allowing employees to focus on high-value work such as compliance and customer engagement, he says. Companies should focus on reskilling and upskilling employees so they can adapt to an AI-powered environment, he recommends.

“Quantifying job replacement isn’t the real story — job evolution is,” Weiss says. “Rather than replacing people outright, AI will reshape roles — shifting employees away from tedious, manual tasks and toward more strategic, analytical, and creative work.”

Like Weiss, Sanjeev Vohra, chief technology and innovation officer at professional services firm Genpact, believes organizations should focus on training employees to foster acceptance, adaptability, and success in an AI-driven environment.

Vohra sees AI as a powerful tool for innovation by driving major growth in new business models, improved customer experiences, and enhanced operations.

“AI is here to empower, not replace humans,” he says. “AI may redefine some jobs, but it will also create new roles requiring human expertise. The faster we learn about AI and adapt, the sooner we can harness its transformative potential, creating new opportunities for growth.”

AI will allow companies to revamp their workforce and replace many tasks, but with an eye on creating more value for the business, not on cutting jobs, adds Tomás Dostal Freire, CIO at Miro, vendor of a digital collaboration platform.

“It is a great opportunity for companies to rethink their job descriptions for roles more likely to be boosted or impacted by AI,” he says. “What this means is that instead of simply replacing humans with AI, you should think about how to elevate the role of the human workforce with the AI capabilities that you bring.”

Reducing headcount is the wrong goal; CIOs should instead be focused on maximizing potential, Dostal Freire adds.

“The true power of AI lies in augmenting human capabilities, allowing us to do even more with the same rather than simply more with less,” he says. “This approach requires a strategic rethinking of how tasks are distributed between AI and human workers, coupled with a commitment to upskilling our workforce. By fostering a symbiotic relationship between AI and human talent, we can unlock unprecedented levels of innovation and efficiency.”

Developer roles in danger

Of course, IT leaders are well aware of these arguments in favor of AI as a force multiplier rather than a workforce replacer. In fact, 58% of those same IT decision-makers surveyed by Foundry agree that generative AI is already enabling their employees to refocus on value-adding tasks. Still, the majority see AI eventually taking the place of headcount as well.

Rohit Nichani, president and chief growth officer at software engineering services firm Encora, is one IT leaders who sees AI replacing some jobs, particularly in the software development sector. Up to 40% of the current software engineers may no longer be needed three years from now, as AI takes over routine tasks, he says.

Nichani already sees some replacement of QA testers with AI, he says. Software engineers will need to rethink their jobs, transition from “doers,” or process-oriented workers, to “drivers,” or outcome-focused improvers, and finally, to “disruptors,” boundary-pushing innovators.

“If an engineer cannot be an innovator, then an engineer will perish,” Nichani says.

IT pros already sense this, as a 2024 survey from Pluralsight found that 74% of IT professionals see AI making their skills obsolete.

The good news, however, for IT workers is that AI will eventually create new jobs, Nichani predicts.

 “The [companies] that can see the real opportunity, they will start investing in innovation early, and they’re already claiming that there’s not enough talent to build those right [AI] solutions,” Nichani says. “Some skills are not going to be required in the quantities that we needed them in the past, but many other skills are going to be needed in much larger quantities.”

However, incumbent workers have some cards to play, he adds. Some current employees may not have advanced AI skills, but they have institutional knowledge that’s difficult to replace with AI.

“They have intimate knowledge of the systems, processes, tools, the people, and the fabric that that makes companies tick,” Nichani says. “If an enterprise wants to get the best value, they have to balance native AI skills with that domain knowledge in order to get the most benefits.”