Klarna swaps 700 jobs for AI, saving $40m

Klarna have rolled out their new OpenAI powered support agent ChatBot (presumably utilising GPT-3.5-turbo in order to take advantage of context fine-tuning) and it has already taken over 2/3rd of support chats, or 2.3 million conversations.

Klarna reckon that is the equivalent of 700 human agents. What's most unexpected though is that it is quantatively better:

• Faster: an average enquiry takes approximately 2mins compared to 11min for a (presumably multi-tasking) human
• More effective 25% drop in repeat enquiries
• Equivalent in terms of customer satisfaction polling

By making those 700 agents redundant Klarna reckons it will add $40m to it's bottom line (although, if you do the Math with an average £25k/yr agent it is more like $20m) but that in itself raises considerable ethical questions.

This is one of the first and most concrete examples of AI directly replacing jobs. Should we be embracing the tool as increased productivity and better customer service? Or worried by this iceberg tip for the future of the workforce?