CEO of company that fired 700 people for AI on why he is hiring humans again: ‘We probably over indexed…’

Klarna, one of Europe’s early adopters of artificial intelligence (AI), is now reversing course on its aggressive use of the technology. According to CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski, the company may have gone too far in cutting costs with AI, potentially at the expense of its service and product quality.

“We probably over indexed a little bit on that, and then in the last six months we have been trying to course correct,” news agency Reuters quoted CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski as saying. He said that the company cut thousands of jobs, dropped vendors such as Salesforce and turned to AI. While this saved millions for the company, he said that the company has now realised that it went too fast, too soon.