One tech investor is not buying the corporate spin about AI boosting employment. Victor Lazarte, a general partner at Benchmark, said AI is “fully replacing people.”
This from msn.com.
Lazarte, a general partner at Benchmark—the venture capital firm that has backed big names including Uber, Asana, Snap, and WeWork, stated:
[T]wo white-collar professionals should be very nervous: lawyers and recruiters.
Further:
[C]ompanies [will] become more valuable and much smaller.
And:
Lazarte said on an episode of the Twenty Minute VC podcast published Monday that two professions should be especially nervous about AI: lawyers and recruiters.
He explained:
[L]aw school students should think about what they could do three years from now that AI could not.
Further:
There’s not going to be that many things.
Fresh associates often do law’s grunt work, and the legal tech industry is buzzing about how AI could cut down busywork.
Lazarte also said:
AI models [will] soon be better than people at interviewing candidates—and far more efficient than companies’ messy, manual hiring processes.
NOTE: Legal and recruiting fields are already being reshaped by AI.
In March, an employment lawyer told Business Insider’s Melia Russell at a legal tech conference that “lawyers are dinosaurs.”
Todd Itami, a lawyer at the large legal defense firm Covington & Burling, said:
Lawyers need to wake up.
Further:
Learning to use artificial intelligence is imperative for their success.
On the recruitment front, startups are trying to automate the hiring process.
In March, BI reported that OptimHire—a startup using AI to replace job recruiters—had raised $5 million. The company said its AI agent, OptimAI Recruiter, can source candidates, conduct screening calls, and schedule interviews for hiring managers, reducing the time and cost of filling open roles.
BI reported in 2023 that HR and recruitment teams were increasingly using AI tools at multiple stages of the hiring process, from reviewing résumés to short-listing candidates. Tech leaders predicted the tools would make the hiring process faster for HR workers and could even prove valuable to job seekers.
While AI may be coming for jobs, Lazarte said it was also going to supercharge companies.
He said:
With costs slashed and productivity soaring, companies will become more valuable—and much smaller.
Further:
You’re going to have these trillion-dollar companies being done by very small teams. People that own shares will get richer, founders will get way richer.
But he warned that the rise of ultra-lean, AI-powered businesses could be a double-edged sword.
It could also be a “very destabilizing force,” Lazarte said, adding that these AI-powered businesses could unlock massive value for society but also risk deepening inequality.
And Lazarte doesn’t think AI’s influence will stop at the office.
He explained:
Pretty soon we’re going to have an app that just tells us what to do all day—and we’re going to love it. We’ll be obedient to machines.
