When artificial intelligence began changing his business four years ago, Aaron Levie, the chief executive of Box, decided to adjust.<\/p>\n
Box<\/a>, a Silicon Valley maker of software for storing and managing data, started weaving A.I. into its products. It began selling A.I. aimed at automating tasks like reviewing and approving contracts. And it asked employees to set aside their usual work to help other colleagues use A.I.<\/p>\n That led Box to post a new job last fall: senior director of A.I., data and integration, to help it wire together its internal systems and data so its workers could better use A.I.<\/p>\n The job was one of 13 new kinds of roles that Box has created because of A.I., with titles like A.I. architect, A.I. solutions manager and A.I. platform leader. With the proliferation of these positions, Box expects to have more than 3,000 employees by early next year, up from 2,900 at the start of this year.<\/p>\n \u201cWe ourselves are selling A.I. to our customers, so that\u2019s actually causing us to need to hire more people,\u201d Mr. Levie, 41, said. \u201cAnd as a user of A.I., we\u2019re getting new forms of productivity that\u2019s also causing us to hire people.\u201d<\/p>\n Across the tech industry, companies such as Meta<\/a> and Coinbase have been laying off workers in the name of A.I. Many people fear that the powerful technology, which can generate code and answers to questions, will increasingly replace workers in jobs like computer programming and engineering management.<\/p>\n But Box shows that A.I. can also spur job creation, making the labor picture more nuanced. Demand for cybersecurity experts<\/a> has soared because of an explosion of A.I.-generated code<\/a> that needs to be vetted, for instance, while companies including Google are recruiting more engineers to help integrate A.I. into their customers\u2019 systems.<\/p>\n The growth of such roles is unlikely to make up for A.I.-related job cuts. With the technology still evolving, it is unclear whether these jobs are permanent or temporary, and whether companies can find workers with the skills to do the work, said Stephan Meier, a professor of business strategy at Columbia Business School.<\/p>\n But new technologies have long created new jobs, he said. In the 1970s and 1980s, the arrival of computers in the workplace led to information technology departments, so \u201cthere is now I.T., there is a chief information officer and so on,\u201d Mr. Meier said. \u201cCompletely new jobs, new businesses, new degrees were created.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Levie helped found Box in 2005. The company\u2019s software, which is often deployed behind the scenes, helps companies store and work on documents and other data. The company has more than 100,000 customers, including federal agencies and Morgan Stanley, and went public in 2015.<\/p>\n Box has typically taken a slow-and-steady approach to hiring. The company, based in Redwood City, Calif., did not go on a hiring binge during the pandemic, as much of the tech industry did. From 2019 to 2022, its work force increased 20 percent to about 2,500 employees. Some of its peers, which have cut thousands of jobs in recent months, doubled or tripled in size during those years.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have never done any kind of broad-scale layoffs, and that remains a huge commitment of ours,\u201d said Jessica Swank, Box\u2019s chief people officer.<\/p>\n When OpenAI kicked off the A.I. frenzy with its release of ChatGPT in 2022, Mr. Levie said, he was excited by the technology\u2019s power. Box has infused its software with A.I., adding features where the technology performs tasks like drafting documents.<\/p>\n