The Norway Wealth Fund, the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, is putting a pause on hiring, focusing on investing in technology such as AI to drive productivity, according to CEO Nicolai Tangen.
The Norway Wealth Fund this year measured employees’ responses to the technology and found in internal surveys employees reported an average 15% increase in productivity because of AI tools. The technology has significantly cut down on the time needed to monitor risks of the companies in which it invests, Tangen said.
“Before it could take days, now it takes minutes,” he said. “We have a risk department that sells down positions with high risks as an outcome.”
Norges Bank Investment Management declined Fortune’s request for comment.
A Klarna spokesperson previously told Fortune the company was “very much still AI-first” and will keep its policy of not replacing employees who leave, instead hiring freelance customer-service agents for its outsourcing division.
Regardless of AI’s limitations, companies will likely continue to invest heavily in the technology, with 64% of CEOs saying they’re going all-in on AI out of fear that they’ll fall behind other companies if they don’t, according to the IBM survey. About half of them said using AI has generated value beyond cost reduction.
The gamble on AI may continue to impact workforce numbers. Timothy Young, CEO of marketing platform Jasper.ai, said he believes AI may continue to impact certain hiring considerations.
“There is a lot of power in the junior employees, but you can’t leverage them the same way that you would in the past,” he added.
