Turnitin furloughed employees earlier this year as CEO predicted AI would enable layoffs

Image credits: Issec/Getty Images

People worry that advances in AI will lead to job losses, but company CEOs rarely admit publicly that AI can help reduce headcount. Chris Caren, chief executive of Turnitin, a plagiarism detection company, warned last year that his company would be able to reduce its headcount by 20% within 18 months thanks to AI, but today he said: , confirmed small-scale layoffs.

TechCrunch has learned that Turnitin laid off about 15 people earlier this year as part of a broader organizational shakeup. While this is far from the 20% reduction that Caren expected (Turnitin has more than 900 employees, according to LinkedIn and Pitchbook data), given Caren’s previous comments, this are a series of layoffs that are of particular interest to us.

Speaking at the 2023 event, he said Turnitin has several hundred engineers, but he believes “we’ll need 20% of that number” in 18 months, referring to the engineering staff. did. “And you could start hiring more people from high school rather than four-year colleges, and that would probably be the same in sales and marketing departments,” he added. His comments came during a discussion about how AI will impact the job market by increasing efficiency.

Turnitin’s software leverages machine learning and AI to detect if student writing is plagiarized. We sell to schools, colleges, universities, and other educational institutions, and work with partners such as Coursera and Blackboard.

There are already some signs that AI will replace workers. Klarna recently announced that an AI assistant could do the work of his 700 employees. It shocked the industry. (Klarna later clarified that the customer service representatives replaced by AI were not direct employees, but were hired by the outsourcing company.)

Turnitin confirmed the layoffs in a statement to TechCrunch, but did not disclose the number of employees.

“After careful consideration, late last year we made the decision to evolve our business strategy, streamline processes, strengthen our customer focus, and make organizational changes to support Turnitin’s continued growth. Turnitin has provided transition support to affected team members in appreciation of their contributions. Out of respect for their privacy, Turnitin will not comment further on this internal matter. I will withhold it.”