The summer of layoffs is real.
Almost certainly this is not actually due to AI. Instead, it is due to tarriffs, or unfounded optimism about AI. Smart companies can easily see the coming impact of tarriffs, and are culling their workforce in anticipation. Dumb companies hear about how “AI can do everything”, and are following suit. But telling everyone the layoffs are due to AI doesn’t scare off (most) investors. So stock prices can remain high for another quarter.
Agreed. Not just tarriffs, but all of the government layoffs and funding cuts as well. I know a lot of people who have either been laid off, or their coworkers have been laid off, or they’ve had their funding cut and projects terminated in the last 5 months. It’s scary out there, hiring freezes across the board and layoffs every few months as companies are just riding on their capital while waiting for funding to resume, but there’s no sign of it happening any time soon, if ever.
My company does mostly government contracting, we haven’t won a single contract in the last 8 months and supposedly we only have a few months of runway left before the big layoffs start. It’s not because contracts are being awarded and we’re just not getting them, it’s because all government spending has been shut off, which has trickle-down effects on thousands of companies across the country. My wife is in a completely different industry but is facing the exact same problems there as well. And none of it has anything to do with AI.
Your sample size of 2 is interesting but doesn’t mean much. I’m definitely open to alternative explanations, but I’d like to hear why you don’t find it credible that people report AI being associated with job cuts. I know lots of people on Lemmy have a hard-on for dissing AI, but AI doesn’t even need to be functional for it to be associated with job cuts. In fact, shitty executive decisions would directly explain AI being associated with lots of job cuts.
I don’t think it can’t be AI, I just don’t believe it at this level. I don’t know anybody, not a single person whose job even could be replaced by AI, much less has been. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen, there are companies that are trying to actually replace their workers with AI, but they’re few and far between and make a lot of headlines when they do it.
I think the more likely explanation is that spending freezes across the board (due to tarriffs and government cutbacks) have put a lot of companies in serious financial stress, and they’re claiming the resulting layoffs are because of AI optimization because the reality of the situation would send their stock price plummeting.
Or maybe it’s both. Company is in dire financial straights, execs pressure middle management to reduce costs any way they can, they yell “AI!” and fire half the staff. Technically they can say they downsized due to AI, when the reality is that they were going to have to fire a bunch of people anyway.
When the midterm elections come, Republicans will want to reverse it, but it will be too late and the Democrats will have Congress for a long time.
republicans wont reverse anything, they already set a series of timebombs in the BBB, to make sure the cuts are blamed on DEMs. i think it would be prudent if republicans take the blame instead , would rather them still remain in power to take the blame, hence that would make them less tangible for re-election.
This article about Ai driven layoffs was written by Ai, shit is dark.
Many authors are required to use them whether they like or not. Not sure if that’s the case here though.
I absolutely don’t doubt it, but it’s hitting right on the nose of the issue in a way that tickles me.
Next year — the summer of rehires after CEOs learn employees can’t really be replaced by AI.
It’s just a pretense to layoff staff and squeeze the remaining employees for more juice. They know it doesn’t work
I don’t know. Some CEOs are pretty stupid
Some?
Never met one I would consider intelligent. They tend to excel at being related to people who own the company or kissing ass. Neither of of which takes that much brains.
Idk, the ceo of my previous company was pretty intelligent. Taught himself software and built the company from the ground up. A bit too much into Jesus for my taste, but a good guy.
rehire h1b visa, for less benefits and salary you mean. this was always the endgame. maybe keep around some token more experienced citizens for good pr, more experienced as in the senior more technical staff that keeps everything from falling apart. healthcare is basically a skeleton crew in more specalized things labs.
Mass layoff, hire starving replacements cheaply
That is probably true in many case, buy to be fair there are some jobs that have had huge impacts due to LLM’s, like translation.
These jobs have been changing quite a lot before this AI bubble mainly because advances in speech-to-text, but I see the LLM’s as final step. The translator need doesn’t fully disappear, but the workflow changes quite drastically and some labor heavy parts are going away.
Note: I am not talking as AI being some hype AGI, just the LLM tech, which is basically advanced auto complete.
At my work we just did a project that included translating a website for multiple regions for a company. We used a translation service that doesn’t use humans. The Belgian, Dutch, German, French, and Italian teams complained that the translation was extremely weird and they had to manually overwrite the automated translations for the majority of the site (at least dozens of thousands of words) before launch.
We’re still a ways off, judging by that anecdote.
Using a bad translation/transcript as base for professional translator is still better than nothing. Like I said, translators are still going to be needed, but lots of the heavy manual work can be now automated.
Also often when very domain specific language is used, the translation made by human can be bad, because they don’t know the proper terms. Of course good professional translators will ask these. It is also something that must be done with these dummy LLM models, you cannot just throw text into it and expect good results.
I mean - eventually they will. But how long can the CEOs hold off waiting for it?
Not long if the line’s gotta go up and there are shareholder dick’s going soft.
AGI is gonna happen any minute now. Just like Tesla’s full self driving.
Self driving?? How can they focus on that when they’re colonizing Mars by 2025?? /s
good luck selling your products to unemployed people
I suspect those are a smokescreen for deeper problems.
Chatbots don’t really reduce the need for staff, but they’re a great excuse.
Executives are fucking idiots though
Chatbots are really good at telling you they can do anything.
That’ll teach the poors for getting all uppity with their living wage demands
Wonderful. White collar and blue collar workers are both fucked.
No problem. Just fire those data folks.
What’s the cause of the most of the layoffs then? Or am I not reading the headline right?
Supposedly, it’s due to AI chatbots replacing the need for as much staff, but I agree with @queermunist@lemmy.ml that the real cause is something else and AI is a smokescreen. Unfortunately, I don’t have any really good answers as to what, so take my comment with a grain of salt.
