I seriously doubt that AI caused a quarter of all US layoffs. You can read dozens of credible articles that AI still isn’t ready for prime time. There is an article that just came out that Microsoft Copilot is a disaster that they are rebranding as entertainment because businesses are not adopting it despite Microsoft spending billions to develop and market it as a business efficiency tool. AI may get there one day but that day isn’t today.
I basically agree.
On the one hand, I do think AI is going to be very transformative, and I do think it will happen pretty soon. But it’s not clear that today is the day.
But there is a lot of evidence that companies want to prune their workforce. Sometimes it’s because they are planning to hire H1-Bs. Sometimes they just want fewer workers. And they need to come up with an excuse and they want the stock market to see the company as “cutting edge” and “ready for the future”. So they announce layoffs because of the benefits of AI. It’s not true, but it’s a good story.
Just because it’s not ready for prime time doesn’t mean companies aren’t drooling over the imagined cost savings. Remember we’re a quarterly report driven economy now. Everybody wants to tell stockholders they did everything necessary to hold down costs. People are expensive, CEOs think AI won’t be (it will be). So ax the people.