{"id":302851,"date":"2025-05-18T05:23:41","date_gmt":"2025-05-18T12:23:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sftarticles.wpenginepowered.com\/en\/?p=302851"},"modified":"2025-07-01T14:37:05","modified_gmt":"2025-07-01T21:37:05","slug":"klarna-thought-it-could-replace-700-workers-with-ai-huge-mistake-now-its-rehiring-humans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/klarna-thought-it-could-replace-700-workers-with-ai-huge-mistake-now-its-rehiring-humans\/","title":{"rendered":"Klarna thought it could replace 700 workers with AI: huge mistake, now it&#8217;s rehiring humans"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In 2022, Klarna, the Swedish fintech company,&nbsp;<strong>fired 700 employees in a move that quickly turned controversial<\/strong>. The layoffs were announced through a pre-recorded video, and worse, the CEO publicly shared personal data of the affected staff. Klarna soon pivoted to AI, claiming its OpenAI-powered assistant could handle the work of all those laid off employees. But just two years later,&nbsp;<strong>the company is walking back that bold decision<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">AI didn\u2019t deliver the promised quality<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Klarna initially praised its AI assistant for performing like a full human team, <strong>claiming it matched agents in customer satisfaction scores<\/strong>. But according to CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski, the decision was based too heavily on cost-cutting, and the outcome was a\u00a0<strong>\u201clower quality\u201d customer experience<\/strong>. As a result, Klarna is now investing again in\u00a0<strong>human customer support<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A new model: on-demand human workers<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The company now aims to follow an Uber-style employment structure.&nbsp;<strong>New human agents will be able to log in and work remotely<\/strong>, offering more flexibility. Klarna targets students and people in rural areas\u2014<strong>cheaper labor pools rather than trained professionals<\/strong>. It&#8217;s a clear shift toward&nbsp;<strong>reducing costs while trying to regain service quality<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">AI cuts jobs but creates new ones too<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Klarna\u2019s trajectory mirrors what\u2019s happening across tech. IBM, for example, replaced 8,000 jobs with AI but hired new programmers and salespeople.&nbsp;<strong>AI handles routine tasks, but companies still need humans<\/strong>\u2014especially to build, guide, and fix what AI can\u2019t do alone. Klarna still plans to reduce its workforce to 2,500, but it has learned:&nbsp;<strong>some jobs just can\u2019t be replaced by algorithms<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 2022, Klarna, the Swedish fintech company,&nbsp;fired 700 employees in a move that quickly turned controversial. The layoffs were announced through a pre-recorded video, and worse, the CEO publicly shared personal data of the affected staff. Klarna soon pivoted to AI, claiming its OpenAI-powered assistant could handle the work of all those laid off employees. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/klarna-thought-it-could-replace-700-workers-with-ai-huge-mistake-now-its-rehiring-humans\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Klarna thought it could replace 700 workers with AI: huge mistake, now it&#8217;s rehiring humans&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9317,"featured_media":302852,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":0},"categories":[1015],"tags":[],"usertag":[],"vertical":[],"content-category":[],"class_list":["post-302851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9317"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302851"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302851\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":303350,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302851\/revisions\/303350"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/302852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302851"},{"taxonomy":"usertag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/usertag?post=302851"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=302851"},{"taxonomy":"content-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-category?post=302851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}