Booking Holdings CEO Glenn Fogel has warned that the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence could carry a significant “human cost,” as companies deploy increasingly capable systems to automate tasks once performed by employees.
Fogel, who has led Booking Holdings since 2017 and also serves as CEO of Booking.com, said the company is actively considering how AI could reshape its workforce while seeking to ensure employees acquire the skills needed to remain productive as technology advances.
“Unfortunately, we’re always thinking, ‘What are the changes in our workforce going to be due to the benefits of AI?’” Fogel said in an episode of the Grit podcast released Monday. “There’s a cost, a human cost to that.”
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Fogel is not questioning the usefulness of AI. Booking has been investing in AI to make travel planning more personalized and automated, with Fogel previously describing a future in which AI could function much like a travel agent that understands a customer’s preferences and can help manage the wider journey.
The tension is that the same technology that can make travel easier for consumers could reduce the amount of human labor required to provide those services.
Fogel said he has instructed Booking’s human-resources leadership that he wants “every single employee” to become “AI literate” and capable of using the technology.
“If such things happen that this person’s job role is no longer necessary, and we can find another spot for that person, at least that person now has been developed so they will have a better opportunity going forward somewhere else,” he said.
A Booking Holdings spokesperson said the company’s effort to make AI literacy a “foundational capability” is an ongoing initiative rather than a one-time training programme.
That distinction points to a broader change in how companies are approaching AI adoption. Rather than treating AI solely as a tool for cutting costs, businesses are increasingly attempting to make AI proficiency a baseline workplace skill. The economic consequences could depend on whether productivity gains translate into higher output and new roles or allow companies to accomplish the same amount of work with fewer employees.
Fogel believes the pressure could be particularly intense for workers at the beginning of their careers.
He predicted that investment banks could eventually employ substantially fewer entry-level analysts as AI systems become capable of performing more of the research, data analysis, and other tasks traditionally assigned to junior employees. That could disrupt a long-standing career model in which graduates enter professional services through highly repetitive junior roles before progressing into positions requiring greater judgment and expertise.
The potential problem extends beyond the number of jobs eliminated. If AI removes a large portion of entry-level work, companies could also lose an important mechanism for training the next generation of experienced professionals. Workers who would traditionally have learned by performing routine tasks may instead have to acquire expertise through new training and apprenticeship models.
The issue is already generating sharply different forecasts among technology executives. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has warned that AI could eliminate a substantial share of entry-level white-collar jobs within five years, while other executives have argued that AI will primarily increase employee productivity and allow companies to produce more without materially reducing headcount.
Fogel’s position sits between those two views. His assertion suggests that even companies expecting AI to expand productivity cannot assume employment will remain unchanged. Some jobs may disappear, others may be redesigned, and workers may increasingly be expected to supervise, direct, and verify AI systems rather than perform the underlying tasks themselves.
Fogel has previously described AI as potentially capable of restoring the personalized experience traditionally associated with human travel agents, but at digital scale. Booking has been developing AI capabilities aimed at making travel planning more conversational and personalized.
That creates an important economic paradox. AI could make travel services more accessible and efficient while simultaneously reducing the human labor needed to deliver them.
The consequences could extend well beyond the technology sector. If investment banks, travel companies, insurers, professional-services firms and other large employers begin reducing entry-level hiring, the effect could reach universities, graduate recruitment and household incomes. A decline in early-career opportunities could also make it harder for workers to accumulate the experience traditionally required to move into higher-paying positions.
Fogel therefore sees the transition as a workforce challenge rather than simply a technology upgrade.
“I think we’ll have some significant rough waters ahead of us,” he said.
Companies have been moving rapidly to integrate AI into their operations, leaving a central question for employers and policymakers: will the productivity gains generated by increasingly capable AI create enough new economic activity and employment opportunities to offset the jobs displaced by automation?
Fogel’s response is to prepare workers for a workplace in which AI is increasingly embedded in everyday tasks. The larger uncertainty is whether becoming “AI literate” will be enough to protect workers when the technology begins performing entire categories of work rather than simply assisting the people who perform them.