“My wife taught me something,” Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski told the London SXSW crowd. He was working on headlines about a company trying to hire human workers after Klarna said she used artificial intelligence to do the equivalent of 700 workers. “Two things can be the case at the same time,” he said.
Siemiatkowski said the company was trying to stop hiring human workers a few years ago, and deployed AI agents that helped reduce customer support costs and increase the company’s revenue per employee. The company had 5,500 workers two years ago, and the number is now around 3,000, he said, adding that Klarna is trying to reinvest the majority of the money in employee cash and stock compensation as the company’s pay costs have fallen.
However, he argued that this does not mean that humans have no opportunity to work for his company. “We think that providing human customer service will always be VIP’s,” he said, comparing more payment methods for clothing that was hand sewn instead of machines. “So I think we can do two things at the same time. We can use AI to automatically take away boring, manual work, but we can also promise our customers that we will have human connections.”
He spoke about the company’s plans to balance employees and AI workers. Siemiatkowski said that the company’s engineering positions are currently not as small as engineering positions in other departments, but he points out that this could change.
“What I’m looking at inside is the new rise of businessmen coding themselves,” he said. “I think people in that category will become even more valuable in the future,” Siemiatkowski continued, especially as they can use AI to deepen their understanding of the business.
He himself uses ChatGpt to help him learn coding and help him understand Klarna’s data side more. He said that doing this helped Klarna become a better company. Previously, he thought he would never catch up with learning what it takes to play a more current role in database conversations at the company.
“I’ll take the slacks red. I’ll throw it at ChatGpt and say, ‘This makes sense, isn’t it?” he says, adding that he uses ChatGpt like a private tutor.
But he also realizes that AI is not just about employees. He spoke about the rise in fraud and how it will affect a high-trust society like Sweden, his hometown. The Financial Times recently reported on the rise of Fintech scams, pointing out how sensitive Singaporean residents are, for example, because Singaporean residents trust a wide range of institutions more naturally.
“And the AI is clearly accelerating this,” Siemiatkowski said.
Siemiatkowski also addressed why the company stopped using Salesforce and Workday, saying it was because Klarna wanted to integrate data in a way that would be easier to supply to AI. For example, Klarna said that if she wants to gather information about one of her clients, she will need to go through Google Suite, Slack, Workday, Salesforce and more.
“We recognize that the only way forward is integration (data),” he said, adding that the company has stopped using around 1,200 small software services.
About pending IPOs? He showed that Klarna could proceed with it immediately, but otherwise was uncommitted. “I’m happy that there’s less turbulence in the market,” he said with a smile.
And what if he had a magic wand and could change one thing? He will once again make the UK part of the EU. The crowd then applauded.