What Is Silent Firing, A New Workplace Trend That's Gaining Popularity

The corporate sector has witnessed numerous workplace trends including great resignation, quiet quitting, moonlighting and rage applying. However, all of it is expected to be replaced by "silent firing", a fad that has already begun to rule the employment industry. As workers worry that they could lose their jobs to artificial intelligence (AI) in the future, some experts have claimed that it is already happening. Employers are "silent firing" or making roles so hard that workers quit and, subsequently are replaced by AI, the New York Post reported. 

This is why Amazon is forcing employees to come into the office five days a week despite most of the workforce expressing dissatisfaction with the return-to-office policy, claims George Kailas, the CEO of Prospero.Ai and Fast Company contributor. As a result, 73% of workers considered quitting, one survey found, per the Post. 

According to Mr Kailas, despite some data that proves remote work boosts productivity, companies like Amazon are "silent firing workers" by enforcing such policies, "because the best way to decrease retention while saving on severance would be to remove remote work," he wrote. 

"What makes this even more alarming is that we have not even scratched the surface of the AI adoption curve," Mr Kailas added.

Meanwhile, according to economist and MIT professor Daron Acemoglu, only 5% of jobs can be replaced or assisted by AI within the next 10 years. "A lot of money is going to get wasted," he previously told Bloomberg. "You're not going to get an economic revolution out of that 5%."

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Mr Acemoglu argued that AI is not reliable yet to complete the tasks humans do and predicted the technology won't be advanced enough anytime soon. "You need highly reliable information or the ability of these models to faithfully implement certain steps that previously workers were doing," Mr Acemoglu continued.

"They can do that in a few places with some human supervisory oversight ... but in most places they cannot," he said. 

Notably, worries about AI taking over jobs come as GenZ fuels another workplace trend dubbed the "Great Detachment". This refers to a decline in employee engagement due to dissatisfaction among workers. 

Poll data from Gallup found a decrease in Gen Z and young millennial engagement by 5%, and American Staffing Association CEO Richard Wahlquist told Business Insider that an estimated three in 10 employees overall are not actively engaged at work.