Are We Positive AI Is the Motive for Amazon, Microsoft, IBM Job Cuts?

We have been listening to that AI is coming for our jobs for years. Is it lastly taking place now?

Perhaps. We’re now seeing a slew of massive corporations ditching hundreds of jobs, citing AI as an animating rationale.

This week, as an example, Amazon mentioned it was chopping 14,000 white-collar jobs, arguing that it could actually and must be leaner in an AI age. In July, Microsoft mentioned the identical when it removed 9,000 jobs. IBM says it has changed a whole bunch of employees with AI.

And all of which will actually be true.

Then again:

• Firms at all times announce some cause for layoffs. That does not imply it is the cause.
• Firms are run by individuals, and folks run in herds. If different individuals are chalking up layoffs to AI, possibly you may do the identical.
• Numerous corporations are investing so much in AI. There are usually not numerous examples of corporations utilizing AI successfully. An MIT research says 95% of company AI investments have generated “zero return” up to now.

Once more. I do not doubt that AI is being utilized in varied methods, throughout a number of industries, and that these makes use of will develop. (I now routinely use ChatGPT to assist me analysis and construction tales just like the one you are studying now. Whereas we’re right here: Axel Springer, the corporate that owns Enterprise Insider, has a partnership with OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT.) And it could make loads of sense for a corporation that thinks it may exchange employees with software program to maneuver to do this upfront, as an alternative of getting round to it after the very fact.

However inevitability is completely different from actuality. I have been by means of sufficient layoff waves to know that rationales change … on a regular basis. Likelihood is you already know this, too.

So possibly AI actually is taking away jobs now. Perhaps it is simply getting the blame. Both method, if you happen to’re the one getting laid off, does it matter?