Australian software firm WiseTech has laid off thousands of employees amid its move towards AI, with its CEO Zubin Appu becoming the target of violent threats, the company says.
WiseTech founder Richard White revealed the news in an email to company employees on Sunday financial Review informed.
White said the company was already experiencing “a number of serious and extremely concerning incidents involving personal attacks.”
But “over the past week, this escalated into a handwritten threat of violence against our CEO Zubin Appu, which included personal information and offensive comments directed at his family members,” White wrote in an email to employees. financial Review.
He said security was increased at the company’s Sydney office “due to the serious nature of the threat” and police were informed of the threat.
threats come one after another Retrenchment saga drags on in WiseTech Due to which employees are frustrated and confused. In February, the company shocked the public by announcing that it was laying off 2,000 employees, or about a third of its entire workforce. But it was not clear who was being axed, leaving employees confused. For months, they waited to hear if they were part of the cuts, but never received an explanation.
The agony was compounded on Monday, when employees received messages in the morning saying their roles had been “impacted”, before receiving another communication two hours later asking for their personal email address for further communications. financial Review. Except that then there was another twist, when emails were deleted from employee inboxes by WiseTech’s IT administrator, and this was followed by a similar email that gave only a fifteen-minute deadline to submit the information.
To add insult to injury, one thing the WiseTech leadership made clear was their love for AI. Appu told investors it expects “further efficiency gains” as AI capabilities improve over time. And White even more modestly claimed that AI agents could complete training in mere minutes that would take humans weeks.
“At the end of the day, it doesn’t take much work to convince people that it’s stupid to pay $100 for labor when you can pay $2 for AI,” White said at an investment conference earlier this month. financial Review.
Reflecting the new paradigm, White also revealed an “AI agent proof” for the company, saying: “Capability is no longer constrained by people or time.”
With fears of job cuts and AI being waved in the face, morale at WiseTech has fallen.
“People are being asked to continue with deliveries as usual, while also helping with the rollout of AI tools that are supposedly meant to replace them,” said one employee. told Guardian earlier this month. “This all happened while everyone was waiting to find out if they were at 50 percent.”
The alleged threat reflects how tensions over AI layoffs are rising across myriad industries. Earlier this month, Standard Chartered CEO Bill Winters sparked a storm of controversy after calling the employees he planned to replace with AI “low-value human capital,” forcing him to not only issue an internal memo to clarify his comments, but also to apparently not perform well thereafter. make a public apology.
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