挪威财富基金首席执行官尼古拉·坦根（Nicolai Tangen）本周表示，该基金将暂停招聘。图片来源：Naina Helén Jåma/Bloomberg—Getty Images
• 挪威财富基金首席执行官尼古拉·坦根表示，该基金将采取措施，加大对人工智能及其他技术的投资力度，并暂停招聘新员工。坦根此前曾告诉《财富》杂志，该基金所应用的人工智能技术极大地缩短了监控投资公司风险所需的时长。最近，IBM对2000名首席执行官展开的一项调查发现，尽管企业不断向人工智能领域注资，但大多数公司并未获得投资回报。
全球最大的主权财富基金挪威财富基金首席执行官尼古拉·坦根表示，该基金将暂停招聘新员工，重点投资人工智能等技术以提高生产率。
据彭博社报道，坦根周二在奥斯陆与议员会面时表示：“我们预计未来员工数量不会再有增长。”
根据挪威财富基金（挪威央行投资管理机构）的年度报告，截至2024年底，该基金在奥斯陆、伦敦、纽约和新加坡的办事处共计拥有676名员工。上一年，其员工数量为654人，高于2022年的572人。该基金负责管理规模达1.8万亿美元资金，投资版图覆盖全球约9000家公司。
在周二的会议之前，坦根向《财富》杂志的彼得·范汉姆（Peter Vanham）表示：“我们投入大量时间钻研如何让基金发挥最大效益。我们提升了目标水准，力求加快公司的运营节奏，并鼓励使用人工智能来提高速度和效率。”
今年，挪威财富基金对员工使用该技术的成效展开评估。内部调查显示，得益于人工智能工具的应用，员工的工作效率平均提升了15%。坦根称，这项技术极大地缩短了监控投资公司风险所需的时长。
他说：“过去完成这项工作可能需要数天，如今仅需几分钟。我们专门设有风险部门，负责处置高风险持仓。”
挪威央行投资管理机构拒绝了《财富》杂志的置评请求。
人工智能在劳动力方面的弊端
对部分大型企业而言，持续加码人工智能投资并未达到预期效果。瑞典金融科技公司Klarna曾实施招聘冻结，并宣称其由OpenAI提供技术支持的人工智能聊天机器人能够完成700名人工客服的工作，但首席执行官塞巴斯蒂安·谢米亚茨科夫（Sebastian Siemiatkowski）如今转变策略。他上周承认人工智能存在局限性，并表示公司将重启人力招聘计划。
他上周告诉彭博社：“遗憾的是，在规划过程中，成本因素的权重过大，最终导致服务质量下滑。对我们而言，加大对人力支持的投入，才是未来发展的正确路径。”
Klarna的一位发言人此前告诉《财富》杂志，该公司“在很大程度上仍以人工智能为先”，并将延续不填补离职员工岗位的政策，而是为其外包部门雇佣自由职业客服人员。
其他首席执行官也得出了类似结论。根据IBM本月早些时候发布的一份研究报告，在接受调查的2000名首席执行官中，有四分之一的受访者表示人工智能项目达成了预期投资回报。仅有16%的受访者表示，这些项目在企业内部得到了推广。
尽管人工智能存在局限性，但企业仍可能持续加大技术投入。IBM的调查显示，64%的首席执行官表示，他们将全力押注人工智能领域，因为担心如果不这样做就会落后于其他公司。约半数受访者表示，使用人工智能带来的价值已突破降本范畴。
持续加码人工智能投资或许会持续影响企业员工规模，营销平台Jasper.ai的首席执行官蒂莫西·扬（Timothy Young）认为，人工智能或将影响部分招聘考量因素。
他告诉《财富》杂志的黛安·布雷迪（Diane Brady）：“随着智能技术走向商品化，企业发展的关键不再是汇聚最顶尖的人才，而是着力培养员工的管理能力。因为在未来12个月里，每位员工都将借助一系列智能工具完成工作。”
他还补充道：“初级员工潜力巨大，但已无法沿用过去的方式加以利用。” （财富中文网）
译者：中慧言-王芳
• The Norway Wealth Fund will take steps to invest more in AI and other technologies and put a pause on hiring new staff, according to CEO Nicolai Tangen. Tangen previously told Fortune its AI has significantly reduced the amount of time needed to monitor the risks of the companies in which it invests. A recent IBM survey of 2,000 CEOs found that despite continued investment in AI, most companies did not see a return in investment.
The Norway Wealth Fund, the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, is putting a pause on hiring, focusing on investing in technology such as AI to drive productivity, according to CEO Nicolai Tangen.
“We do not foresee the number of employees increasing any further,” Tangen said in a Tuesday meeting with lawmakers in Oslo, Bloomberg reported.
The wealth fund, or Norges Bank Investment Management, employs 676 people across offices in Oslo, London, New York and Singapore, as of the end of 2024, according to its annual report. The year prior, it had 654 employees, up from 572 in 2022. Responsible for managing a $1.8 trillion fund, the fund invests in about 9,000 companies globally.
“We’re spending a lot of time on how to get the most performance out of the fund,” Tangen told Fortune’s Peter Vanham prior to the Tuesday meeting. “We’ve increased the level of ambition, to get speed in the organization. We encourage the use of AI to drive speed and efficiency.”
The Norway Wealth Fund this year measured employees’ responses to the technology and found in internal surveys employees reported an average 15% increase in productivity because of AI tools. The technology has significantly cut down on the time needed to monitor risks of the companies in which it invests, Tangen said.
“Before it could take days, now it takes minutes,” he said. “We have a risk department that sells down positions with high risks as an outcome.”
Norges Bank Investment Management declined Fortune’s request for comment.
AI’s drawbacks in the workforce
Betting big on AI hasn’t been all it’s cracked up to be for some major companies. After implementing a hiring freeze and touting its AI chatbot, powered by OpenAI, could complete the work of 700 human agents, Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski has changed course. He conceded last week that AI had its limitations and said the company would resume hiring human workers.
“As cost unfortunately seems to have been a too-predominant evaluation factor when organizing this, what you end up having is lower quality,” he told Bloomberg last week. “Really investing in the quality of the human support is the way of the future for us.”
A Klarna spokesperson previously told Fortune the company was “very much still AI-first” and will keep its policy of not replacing employees who leave, instead hiring freelance customer-service agents for its outsourcing division.
Other chief executives have come to similar conclusions. Of 2,000 CEOs surveyed, a quarter of them said AI projects delivered the promised return on investment, according to an IBM study published earlier this month. Only 16% reported those projects were scaled across the enterprise.
Regardless of AI’s limitations, companies will likely continue to invest heavily in the technology, with 64% of CEOs saying they’re going all-in on AI out of fear that they’ll fall behind other companies if they don’t, according to the IBM survey. About half of them said using AI has generated value beyond cost reduction.
The gamble on AI may continue to impact workforce numbers. Timothy Young, CEO of marketing platform Jasper.ai, said he believes AI may continue to impact certain hiring considerations.
“With the commoditization of intelligence, it’s not about having the smartest people anymore,” he told Fortune’s Diane Brady. “It’s about developing your staff to have management skills because every employee in the next 12 months is going to have a series of agents that are helping them do their work.”
“There is a lot of power in the junior employees, but you can’t leverage them the same way that you would in the past,” he added.