The AI-powered collapse of the American tech workfoce
(htxt.co.za)
from Pro@programming.dev to technology@lemmy.world on 23 May 15:32
https://programming.dev/post/30872399
from Pro@programming.dev to technology@lemmy.world on 23 May 15:32
https://programming.dev/post/30872399
- Over 90 000 employees have been laid off from the global technology industry in 2025 so far.
- Over 73 percent of all layoffs are taking place in American companies as they embrace AI-powered efficiency.
- Intel will likely be the biggest firer this year, with an expected over 40 000 positions being cut by the end of the year.
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Well if this happening obviously we don't need all of the H1-bs being imported... Right?
That's like 90k per year, so if they should stop that, there would be enough jobs for domestic slaves š
No, no, no.
More slaves, more cheap!
(And Iām not against immigration, but ruthless capitalism wants work as a cheap commodity.)
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.
Particularly for the investors in AI companies. AI is useful. I use it a lot, but all of this shit they put out about what if AIās take over the world or how weāre going to have to figure out how to deal with 90% unemployment is science-fiction marketing.
Itās not going to take over the world. Itās not going to put artists out of workānot once consumers take in the AI-generated results.
Itās sure as fuck not putting software devs out of work on any kind of scale. It makes me a bit more productive, but not enough to replace a productive co-worker.
On the other hand, Iāve had team members who would boost overall team productivity by getting fired before LLMs.
āCollapseā? fuck that. These companies (well, with the exception of Intel maybe) are more profitable than ever. Theyāre not firing people because they canāt afford to pay them. Theyāre deliberately firing them for greater financial rewards for themselves at the expense of the future work.
Consider that AI doesnāt really do much by itself. It still needs people, and the more itās expected to do the more people it needs. Which is just the idiotic cherry on the shit sundae that is AI.
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. Thatās not to say that AI has no effects or Iām 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 youāre 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 itāll 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 isnāt special. Weāve experienced a prolonged period of labour shortage in it which made it seem different but thatās always changing.
The article certainly implies that this relates to AI, but doesnāt really provide support for that. Intel dominates all of the numbers here by an enormous amount, and Iām very skeptical that Intel layoffs are because they were able to automate positions ā Intel just went through an absolutely catastrophic two generations of CPUs that destroyed themselves and then fell behind schedule on fabs.
theverge.com/ā¦/intel-is-laying-off-over-10000-empā¦
Also, while Iām not saying that a South African news source couldnāt provide reasonable US business coverage, it probably wouldnāt be the first place Iād look.
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 youāre 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 donāt use AI are obviously so stupid that you wouldnāt want to employ them anyway.
Meanwhile I sit at my desk trying to make it do something useful.
My last job tracked it, because of course they did. They could tell how often we logged into the AI tools and how many queries we ran a week and if we didnāt hit a certain number, we were reprimanded.
It was a support job. They wanted us running customer tickets to train the AI, we were basically training our replacement. And itās obvious to everyone, weāre not stupid, so morale was absolutely in the fucking gutter.
I just got recruited into a workgroup assigned to get AI tools together to perform one of the job functions we have in all our teams. We were told itās on the down-low for now because people are of course concerned about job security, but this is all really to guarantee they have job security.
I was likeā¦ blinkā¦ wut.
Nothing like being told to ignore the evidence of your eyes and ears.
working at a medium sized enterprise, about $100m in profit a year.
we got a new CEO. The old one refused, REFUSED, to implement AI in anything we did outside of alerting and monitoring.
new CEO within a week made an announcement that we were developing our own AI model to interact with customers etc.
at least I know the real reason why the board replaced the last CEO.
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 wonāt 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.
Yes, AI (specifically AGI) is the path to socialism. Leftist are only opposed to it at the moment because the right is also optimistic about the tech, so they need to take the opposite stance.
@Plebcouncilman @yuknowhokat orrrr, leftists realize that automation doesn't guarantee anything in terms of political arrangements and, having analyzed the structure and ideology of current LLM ownership, recognize that the dangers of expanding water consumption and GHG emissions are certain, the capacity for disinformation is immense, and the theoretical benefits are decades off, if they ever happen at all.
@SallyStrange @Plebcouncilman @yuknowhokat weird how under capitalism every technological advancement just makes us work more and not less
@SallyStrange @Plebcouncilman @yuknowhokat When they haven't tried actual diversity, but turn to the machines for help? That's not a good look.
Good question. When companies start laying off everyone because AI takes over, then how will their customers afford to buy their products?
What good is their AI when they no longer have customers?
@yuknowhokat @Pro what? why would they do that? no, they'll just commodify the permanent underclass.
So about half of it is Intel? And that has nothing to do with AI, itās because Intel is struggling bigtime right now.
Lots and lots of others have laid off. Presumably some better companied have added jobs in the meantime.
Yeah, it's probably more the fail of the last Core generation of CPU.
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.
Agree, they usually like to blame the economy, āthe market, or things perceived as outside their control and avoid taking responsibility.
Unionize every workplace
If AI is stealing our jobs, can we lock AI up in El Salvador? After all, itās not paying its fair share of taxes. Itās stealing from us. Itās a danger to women and children. It eats cats and dogs.
Every AI agent must be taxed like a regular worker.
When engineer headcount was the important thing to looking futuristic, they grew headcount. Now, it looks like growing your headcount means youāre not in on the future because if so youād be using AI good enough to get by with less engineers. So, they reduce headcount and say itās because of all of the awesome AI things they are totally using.
Meanwhile they're headless, because management is a bunch of morons.
I have yet to see any evidence that AI is displacing tech workers. The articles which claim this always correlate the release of AI to layoffs in the tech market without looking Amy deeper. The more likely culprits Iāve heard are overhiring during the pandemic and less deficit spending due to high interest rates. AI is straight up not capable of replacing a software engineer yet
Itās probably both: companies need to save money, so they lay off workforce. They can lay off even more due to increased efficiency from AI.
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.