Companies keep slashing jobs. How worried should workers be about AI replacing them?

Los Angeles Times ^ | July 5, 2025 3 AM PT | Queenie Wong

[E. Pluribus Unum]

• Workers are anxious that artificial intelligence could wipe out their jobs as layoffs continue and employers are cautious about hiring.

• Tech executives, economists and other experts say that AI could automate mundane and tedious tasks and also create new roles.

Tech companies that are cutting jobs and leaning more on artificial intelligence are also disrupting themselves.

Amazon’s Chief Executive Andy Jassy said last month that he expects the e-commerce giant will shrink its workforce as employees “get efficiency gains from using AI extensively.”

At Salesforce, a software company that helps businesses manage customer relationships, Chief Executive Marc Benioff said last week that AI is already doing 30% to 50% of the company’s work.

Other tech leaders have chimed in before. Earlier this year, Anthropic, an AI startup, flashed a big warning: AI could wipe out more than half of all entry-level white-collar jobs in the next one to five years.

Ready or not, AI is reshaping, displacing and creating new roles as technology’s impact on the job market ripples across multiple sectors. The AI frenzy has fueled a lot of anxiety from workers who fear their jobs could be automated. Roughly half of U.S. workers are worried about how AI may be used in the workplace in the future and few think AI will lead to more job opportunities in the long run, according to a Pew Research Center report.

The heightened fear comes as major tech companies, such as Microsoft, Intel, Amazon and Meta cut workers, push for more efficiency and promote their AI tools. Tech companies have rolled out AI-powered features that can generate code, analyze data, develop apps and help complete other tedious tasks.

“AI isn’t just taking jobs. It’s really rewriting the rule book on what work even looks...,”

[ScottHammett]

Methinks government jobs would be an excellent use case for AI. Don’t see much about that in the press.

[iamgalt]

LA Times has become a good source for comic relief. They are giving NYT a real contest for the most asinine and dishonest spin on any given story.

[jimpick]

Isnt this the same news paper that says we need illegals to fill the unfilled jobs Americans wont do?

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Methinks government jobs would be an excellent use case for AI. Don’t see much about that in the press.

Sounds like a recipe for RoboCop world.

[MinorityRepublican]

In New Jersey, it's against the law to pump your own gas.

We should ban Uber from using driverless cars.

There are some things we can do to prevent automation.

[AZJeep]

I am happily retired, I am not worried at all!

But, honestly, people are very creative. If some jobs go away, some other appear.
Since ever!
The Luddites protested industrial revolution in 1850ties.
All kind of jobs went away! But, it was only for good! Many other jobs appeared and the society got very rich thanks to it.
If the Luddites won, we would be quite poor now, but there would be great jobs, like horse carriage coachman, blacksmith, millwright, shoemaker, tailor, etc. openings up there.

[Vaduz]

AI replacing them sounds like the stories that talked about robots replacing people on the production lines.

Technology a double edged sward indeed.

[ClearCase_guy]

I say that just about all of the desk jobs that “went home” during COVID can be done by AI. That’s most of the government, and banking, and insurance, and law firms, and media, and lots more.

If you work with old people, sick people, children, or if you work in retail, you might get lucky because those jobs tend to work best face-to-face with real people.

But I think society needs to think about what happens when 40 million people no longer have anything useful to contribute to the national economy.

[smokingfrog]

very

[MinorityRepublican]

But I think society needs to think about what happens when 40 million people no longer have anything useful to contribute to the national economy.

They can all take cruises with Carnival.

Seriously though, it's a question that our government is going to answer.

We will have surplus labor so 20% of the population will end up unemployed.

[GaltAdonis]

Take a look around at the current economy, and remember it well, because AI is /may
about to make much of our civilization even more dysfunctional or
many things much less useful and/or frustratingly annoying.

Call me a lowly know-nothing Luddite robotics/process-control software engineer if you must.

But I do look forward to be proven wrong on this point. We shall see, one way or t’other…

[plain talk]

“But, honestly, people are very creative. If some jobs go away, some other appear.”

Very true. Younger people need to be savvy and get education and/or training for jobs less easily replaced by AI in the short term. In the long term we will all be dead anyway.

[ridesthemiles]

THERE ARE MORE HORSES IN THE USA TODAY THAN JUST PRIOR TO THE MECHANICAL REVOLUTION.

A GOOD FARRIER CAN MAKE A GOOD LIVING. AND IS HIS OWN BOSS.

A FARRIER I HAD IN N CALIF—OVER 20 YEARS AGO-—WAS RETIRED FROM THE MILITARY....

HE MADE OVER $100 K working with horses-—and he was his own boss.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

One of the things I am looking forward to is AI customer support where it will be completely impossible to speak to an actual human being.

What could possibly go wrong?

[Vermont Lt]

I have to laugh when people talk about manufacturing coming back to the US…with US based jobs.

A modern factory employees about 1/10th of what they would have 40 years ago. Robots do EVERYTHING.

If you want your kid/grandkid to be successful, tell them to get into Robot Repair tech. That will be a thing for a few years. Then that will be automated as well.

[ScottHammett]

Sauce on 40M? Well, with the like expectancy of appliances these days, the service economy should be booming.

[TheDon]

Might have an impact on H1B visas.

[jroehl]

AI will make it easier for the Indian workers at facebook and google to devise more clever ways to force you to view advertising content.

That is all they care about.

[ScottHammett]

and farming