5% of those layoffs will actually be AI related. The other 95% will be profits related.
100% of those layoffs will be for shareholder short term gain.
Can we lay off the CEO first? He’s pretty useless.
Yes.
This type of reporting is frustrating and I really should get off the internet.
These surveys are done by consultanting companies that have large investment holdings. For example in this report one of the surveys is from Mercer, who has an investment wing that has a AUM (asset under management) 1 of $727 Bn according to their website 2. Would there potentially be any sort of chance someone like Mercer never put out a survey that goes against the bullish market driven by AI speculation? Obviously journalists won’t think about these things anymore because that will effect their click rate.
99% of CEOs
ExpectLooking forward to AI-Driven Layoffs in the Next Two YearsWould you look at that. They kept pushing layoff all the time for fake reasons to increase immediate profit, and now they’ll have another fake reason to do mass layoffs for maximum immediate profit.
What? AI? Who cares about that at this point. It’s like a pretty ribbon on a big gift box to shareholders.
They expect layoffs. They’re just going to blame AI for it.
Exactly this… Even ones actually attributed to AI will likely be an overreach that won’t be realized until after a person’s life has been totally upended… Shit’s gonna be bleak
Bingpot!
This is too dismissive.
Industrialization and automation has already eliminated an entire class of work that was otherwise there.
In a hunter gathered society or an early industrial society there was always work for everyone, in modern capitalist society, there quite frankly isn’t, and that leads to huge numbers of people just being cast aside.
And AI may wipe out a huge number of the rest. I genuinely can’t possibly fathom how it will do anything but exacerbate every single one of society’s problems.
The industrial revolution created loads of new jobs in manufacturing, logistics, distribution, procurement and transport.
The digital revolution created loads of IT, cybersecurity and programming jobs.
AI removes most if not all the human labour from the equation if it functions properly. What new jobs has the AI revolution created or will create? Because last I checked, “prompt engineer” is not a job title. I can’t even find any fucking jobs for it anywhere from a LinkedIn search.
(sigh)
I’d prefer tech-bros pushing crypto, Web3 and NFTs to something that can actually cause mass unemployment and societal collapse.
And AI may wipe out a huge number of the rest. I genuinely can’t possibly fathom how it will do anything but exacerbate every single one of society’s problems.
I can see things going one of two ways:
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Society gets its shit together, uses AI, robotics and sweeping economic reforms to build new infrastructure and create an abundance of resources. Housing shortages, hunger, thirst and famine become a thing of the past, we move towards a post-scarcity utopia.
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The far more likely scenario. Mass unemployment leads to civil unrest, quelled through violence.
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LLMs are not and will never be good enough to replace human labor. Augment it, sure, and that could lead to fewer jobs but that’s not generally what happens. They are, however, good enough for execs to think they can replace human labor.
They don’t have to be as good to replace us.
It even can be a feature if AI isn’t as good as the people they are replacing. For example, in the case of call centers/help lines, it might be more desirable to have a shitty system to discourage callers yet have plausible deniability…
I find I’m referencing Cory Doctorow a lot lately…
I was in a meeting at a credit card company about 2 decades ago where a VP said exactly that - without the AI part.
I keep seeing these comments where AI is hailed as the next industrial revolution, but I think they all miss the point.
Industrialization created jobs. There were fewer skilled jobs lost than new skilled jobs created. It then created the need for more knowledge based jobs, like civil engineers.
The AI lobby is doing the opposite. It targets higher paid skilled jobs. If they were to succeed, they would give birth to the opposite of the Industrial Revolution.
Clarification - these are management driven layoffs. AI doesn’t drive anything, managers replace people with it.
well, not in the sense of “layoffs because AI can do those jobs”, but still AI-driven in the sense of “AI did most of the actual grunt work of laying off those people”.
If there is a repetitive and predictable activity that can be automated at this point it’s layoffs. Announcements and internal talking points are already clearly LLM-generated.
“Did” is an interesting word. If somebody dug a ditch I wouldn’t say the shovel “did” the grunt work.
Who are they expecting to sell stuff to if everyone is unemployed and fighting over an ever decreasing piece of the pie?
Companies will be just selling stuff to the wealthy. Afaik currently already the top 10% wealthy make up 50% of consumerism related revenue.
everyone is unemployed and fighting over an ever decreasing piece of
the pie?Roasted CEO
That’s (really) a political issue, not a company issue. Each company does exactly what it’s supposed to do: maximize profit for their shareholders. Even if they know it will end in a total disaster, they’ll keep doing that. That’s how the system works. Making sure the system works is the job of the policy makers.
Unfortunately, the policy maker is now in the companies payroll and so helps maximize the shareholders profit, there is no one left to look at the bigger picture and/or long term effects.
I expect 99% of CEOs to get laid off. They are too lazy, expensive and don’t want to work. They have a ridiculous sense of entitlement. Ripe for automation.
When you say CEOs are you thinking of guys who are making millions with staff living on almost nothing?
Someone’s gotta see the benefit of not paying those people. They don’t do anything except take the blame for shareholder decisions.
That’s okay. I will choose not to participate in your new economy beyond buying essentials like food.
You know, a year ago people in charge were all, like nooo we’re not going to fire people and pocket the payroll savings
When did we cross the line where everybody stopped lying? I mean, our vaunted business leaders dropping the bullshit is welcome, even if its bad news… but the interesting bit is in the collective, unconscious decision to just own up to this as the likeliest future.
The Trump admin has emboldened the entire upper echelons of society to drop pretense because enough of society is stupid enough to always buy it even if its painfully obvious that they are lying. They feel untouchable with their buddies in charge.
Anyone know of any publicly traded guillotine producers? I’d like to invest early.
https://isaiprofitable.com/ is a good site to see how profitable AI is at this moment…
Including Nvidia in the revenue figure is like asking “Is playing in a casino profitable” and including the revenue of the house in the stats.
I dunno there are some people who have bankrupted multiple casinos.
That must have absolutely ruined them!
but even so, the total including the house is still very negative, here. It would be like… I don’t know, I can’t think of anyone in their right mind who could bankrupt a casino 😜
I can think of someone very much not in their right mind who did…
I think it’s only a matter of time.
Waymo already exists in some parts of the US and is being trialled in Atlanta and London. Miso Robotics already can automate manual work in kitchens and have their bots rolled out in fast food chains like White Castle. Claude is miles ahead of competitors in terms of output quality, and there are probably a lot of AI slop content creators making absolute bank from YouTube, Instagram and TikTok.
Optimus 3 will be released soon and at a predicted price of $30,000 per robot, it could potentially lead to mass layoffs in warehouses. Because remember, robots don’t get tired, don’t need food, don’t need water, don’t need to piss, don’t need to shit, won’t complain about OSHA violations, and don’t need a paycheck. All that matters is work quality and price
According to some accounts, China are apparently even further ahead than the US in terms of AI and robotics, but they’re deliberately holding back their rollout of humanoid robots and self-driving vehicles because they know a wide rollout will lead to mass unemployment and civil unrest.
A big part of the reason AI spend is so expensive is because there’s this huge arms race to throw gargantuan amounts of computing power in the hopes of achieving AGI that way. While I think AGI may be bullshit and unachievable, I think they’ll eventually turn a profit once they stop focusing on throwing trillions at data centres.
That really shows who profits from all of this and i can only hope that company would implode
spend
Was the site built by coke-addled used-car salesmen on their break?
Haha i dont know
Automation of what ?
Can any ‘ai’ round up billionaires and corporate CEO’s and ‘process’ them through a woodchipper or guillotine?
That’s the only ai company/startup I’m interested in.
