The Onclusive affair

Have you been following the Onclusive affair? You should have, because it prefigures what we’re going to live through within a few months / a year, and it underlines our lack of preparation.

Layoff plan

Onclusive is an American company specialized in media and communications, whose French branch counts 447 employees.

In mid-September it announces a layoff plan for 209 of its employees, replaced by an AI. At the end of last week it announces it’s reversing course and pushes its plan announcement back to December. A great victory according to the politicians (those who took an interest) and the unions. A mixed verdict according to Matthieu Moreau.

For what follows I won’t talk about ethical considerations, just an observation and an anticipation of what’s going to happen over the next 5 years. (I also won’t talk about the communication style of the company’s boss, who announced the layoffs on a video call, starting with a photo… of his dog).

Onclusive is one of those companies that operate in an “intellectual” sector and that need a large share of human brains to deliver their services. With an industrialization rate of 13.5%, companies like Onclusive, there are plenty of them in France (one of the least industrialized countries in Europe). Tough luck, this is exactly the kind of activity that is easily automated with generative AIs like GPT. Onclusive does specialized press reviews for its clients? Once you have the right data sources (the press, here), it’s a few lines of code, and a few good human brains, to produce an equivalent result (no exaggeration whatsoever).

What follows is logical. Onclusive develops(*) an AI that will be able to do the same work as its employees, for 10 / 100 / 1000 times less money, and it chooses (has) to part with a (large) share of its employees. Why? Because it would only take a few weeks to create a competitor that will sell its services 10 /100 / 1000 times cheaper to the same clients, who, by ending their contracts with Onclusive, put the company at risk of bankruptcy (and therefore put its employees at risk — you see where I’m going).

If we look at Onclusive’s situation from the angle of pragmatism, I think this company doesn’t really have a choice, that sooner or later a “powered by AI” competitor is going to take the whole pot, and that it’s better for its employees to take this plan now, while it’s advantageous, than to wait for an outcome (bankruptcy) that is, in my view, inevitable. Any company whose raw material is gray matter is going to be threatened by competitors of a new kind, with few human resources, but who will be augmented by AI.

Do you hear a politician talking about it?

A few months ago, a change in the settings of our pension system brought part of our country to a standstill. The GenAI revolution had, at that moment, reached the ears of the general public, via the release of ChatGPT. For a country whose economy is based above all on services (in large part “intellectual”), the impact on that economy and on employment is going to be phenomenal, with consequences for the funding of our entire system.

The question wasn’t when to retire, but how to fund it if 20%-30% of the working population is out of work? No party, no politician took the subject in hand. Whatever the client cases, whatever the sectors, for a large number of jobs, generative AI makes it possible to do at a minimum as well as humans, for (much) less money. If it’s naive to say that it will replace humans, it’s just as naive to think that it will have only a marginal impact on employment. The Onclusive cases are going to multiply.

We are only at the beginning of the wave, a tidal wave is coming and nobody is ready.

(*) no need for gigantic resources with #AI to do this.