This is a lie that Big Tech or tech journalists are telling. Blaming job losses on AI is catchy and gets more clicks. AI may have a role in it but it’s nowhere near the main reason for the layoffs. Big Tech is simply deprioritizing entire divisions that don’t add to the company’s bottom line and getting rid of them. When times were good those were overlooked. Not any more.
The one way AI is indirectly responsible at Big Tech is that AI is *taking away* resources from other divisions. They are building large AI platforms which is a huge investment. It comes at the cost of shutting down divisions that were considered low priority. I know Google did this last year and the year before. Sundar Pichai himself wrote about it. It’s not that AI is replacing the jobs gone. Those jobs are gone to *fund* AI.