- AI again compared to the Dotcom bubble, companies warned of post-bubble decline
- Cisco CEO warns of “carnage on the way” as employment changes
- IMF chief says AI will hit labor market ‘like a tsunami’
Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins has warned that while artificial intelligence will create new opportunities, it will also be responsible for “carnage along the way” with many companies unlikely to survive any post-bubble shakeout.
Talking with BBCRobbins argues that AI will eventually be “bigger than the Internet,” indicating that more is coming, just as the Dotcom bubble preceded the long-term Internet transformation.
But these aren’t baseless projections—Cisco actually survived a similar bubble around the top in 2000, when the stock fell about 80% after a rapid rise. Robbins emphasized that the same doom could follow this initial AI boom.
Cisco has already been through a bubble
Moving on to the workforce implications, Robbins warned that upcoming roles will be eliminated entirely and others will be reshaped. Customer service appears to be the area most at risk, with colleagues who are “very good at using AI” more likely to be successful.
“You don’t have to worry about AI taking your job as much as you have to worry about someone who is very good at using AI taking your job,” he summed up.
Robbins also noted that AI has enabled attacks to become more sophisticated and less detectable, suggesting that cybersecurity teams may actually have their work cut out so they won’t be immediately affected by AI-induced job losses.
Despite concerns that AI could displace human workers, a new UK government report says it’s still hard to categorically say redundancies are a result of AI-driven productivity. Yet job adverts in the UK fell by 38% for occupations with high AI exposure between 2022 and 2025 (via McKinsey research).
Robbins is not alone in sharing his concerns about AI’s effects on the labor market. Speaking at the recent WEF conference in Davos (via CNBC), the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Kristalina Georgieva, warned that AI “is hitting the labor market like a tsunami, and most countries and most companies are not prepared for it.”
Looking ahead, it’s clear that workers must focus on upskilling to stand out from their competition in a changing job market.
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