More like the AI rationalized collapse of the industry.

The cuts largely have nothing at all to do with AI, but it makes for a very good narrative to spin at investors.

I think they are just using AI to put a positive spin on it. They know hard times are ahead and they need to reduce headcounts to preserve cash.

So about half of it is Intel? And that has nothing to do with AI, it's because Intel is struggling bigtime right now.

The article certainly implies that this relates to AI, but doesn't really provide support for that. Intel dominates all of the numbers here by an enormous amount, and I'm very skeptical that Intel layoffs are because they were able to automate positions --- Intel just went through an absolutely catastrophic two generations of CPUs that destroyed themselves and then fell behind schedule on fabs.

https://www.theverge.com/...

Intel is laying off over 15,000 employees and will stop ‘non-essential work’

After losses, the chipmaker is cutting $10 billion in costs.

Also, while I'm not saying that a South African news source couldn't provide reasonable US business coverage, it probably wouldn't be the first place I'd look.

Unionize every workplace

The correlation between adoption AI and laying off software staff is just a correlation. Layoffs in this industry have happened before. There were plenty in the 2000s. That's not to say that AI has no effects or I'm defending AI in any way. Rather that if you believe that AI is causing layoffs in software and the profits come from replacing workers with AI you're getting the wrong picture and reaching the wrong conclusions. Companies can absolutely make more money by laying off staff in many conditions. For example laying off most of the team that built a system when only a fraction is needed to support it reduces costs and boosts profits. Another example and a more relevant one, is when a firm stops believing it'll be able to sell more product in the future, laying off the workers it had hired to build that product reduces its costs and boosts its profits. None of this is new and the technology sector isn't special. We've experienced a prolonged period of labour shortage in it which made it seem different but that's always changing.

"Collapse"? fuck that. These companies (well, with the exception of Intel maybe) are more profitable than ever. They're not firing people because they can't afford to pay them. They're deliberately firing them for greater financial rewards for themselves at the expense of the future work.

Consider that AI doesn't really do much by itself. It still needs people, and the more it's expected to do the more people it needs. Which is just the idiotic cherry on the shit sundae that is AI.

I work in tech and I cannot overstate the AI craze that executives are on. We are constantly told to use it for everything, and that the only secure jobs are those held by people who use AI for everything. Using AI all the time is the only way they think you’re maximally productive. My LinkedIn is full of CEOs and influencers all crying that people who use AI will be elevated and everyone else will be dropped. In the most extreme cases, they imply that people who don’t use AI are obviously so stupid that you wouldn’t want to employ them anyway.

Meanwhile I sit at my desk trying to make it do something useful.

When engineer headcount was the important thing to looking futuristic, they grew headcount. Now, it looks like growing your headcount means you're not in on the future because if so you'd be using AI good enough to get by with less engineers. So, they reduce headcount and say it's because of all of the awesome AI things they are totally using.

If so many jobs move from actual humans to AI what happens to those humans who lose their jobs? It takes far fewer people to maintain an AI instance than the number of people it took to do the job. There won't be enough other jobs for people to do so does this mean that universal basic income becomes a thing? This would of course require much higher taxes on the most profitable companies.

The biggest tech companies are still trimming from pandemic over hiring. Smaller companies are still snatching workers up. And you also have companies trimming payroll for the coming Trump recession. Neither have anything to do with AI.