Tech CEOs increasingly cite AI skills and hiring, while workers report growing job insecurity

The Washington Post looks at giant tech companies "feeding every available dollar into the cash-incinerating maw of AI machines." They warn "Tech superstars that once had oodles of cash left over at the end of each year are now flipping into the red..." [While optimists expect] huge corporate profits and a society-wide boost to wealth and well-being... questions about that AI vision are now growing more urgent: When, if ever, will this payoff arrive? And what will the fallout be for Americans if the titanic investment doesn't quickly deliver? "This AI thing better work out because if it doesn't ... we're going to have a problem," said Torsten Slok, chief economist at investment firm Apollo Global Management. AI costs and doubts are spreading. The U.S. stock market has swooned this summer over fear of the AI bubble going bust... The AI gamble sweeping up American fortunes is led by tech companies splurging on hulking data centers packed with computer chips and equipment needed to develop sophisticated AI models and deliver them to customers. In investor calls in the past week, Google, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon pointed to soaring AI-related sales and business deals. Advertisers are using the technology to tailor marketing pitches and corporations and start-ups are buying access to chatbots and other AI software to boost productivity... But this spending can only continue if AI generates an even larger avalanche of new revenue to pay for it all. Financial results released over the past week show that the AI titans' mammoth costs are largely swamping the sales boost from the technology. At Google, for every dollar of cash its business generated in the past three months, $1.15 went out the door to pay for AI computer chips and equipment, land for AI data centers and other big-ticket purchases. The company is covering the difference partly by borrowing money and selling more of its stock. Next year, five leading AI companies — Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta and Oracle — are projected to have negative free cash flow, which measures the cash left over after paying expenses and AI infrastructure costs. The figures, based on investment analyst projections compiled by S&P Global Market Intelligence, show a stunning reversal for what have been some of the world's most cash-generating corporations... The companies remain profitable by standard financial accounting measures that spread out the costs of their AI infrastructure spending over many years... Pessimists see a bet so gargantuan that it cannot possibly pay off. The pessimists are growing louder. The Bank for International Settlements, a typically measured institution in Switzerland that advises government bankers around the world, recently warned there was risk of "economy-wide recessions" if the AI boom falters. That could mean pain for workers and communities across the United States. "I'm not saying AI is going to go away, it's just not clear to me these guys are going to make money on it," said Christopher Wood, global head of equity strategy at investment bank Jefferies who has correctly predictedpast financial bubbles. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AI has an optics problem. For years, surveys have shown that public perception of AI is largely negative. When the Pew Research Center polled thousands of U.S. adults in 2024, only 17% of them thought the technology would have a positive impact in the years to come. Most of them were especially concerned with job losses, with 64% of respondents saying they believed AI would eliminate jobs in the near future.  A Gallup poll this week indicates that Americans have actually grown more skeptical of AI, even as they have become more familiar with the technology. While over half of Americans (52%) still think AI can do equal amounts of good and harm, there’s been a sharp increase in the number of people who have fallen out of love with AI. In 2024 and 2025, Gallup found that 31% of people surveyed said they felt AI did more harm than good. This year, that figure jumped to 39%—and among young people between the ages of 18 and 29, it was even higher at 47%. Only 9% of people thought AI could do more good than harm, down from 12% last year.  AI adoption has climbed steadily in the workplace and beyond, suggesting the shift in public opinion is informed by a greater awareness of AI’s potential for harm, rather than fear of the unknown. Drawing on data from a nationally representative household survey, the Federal Reserve found earlier this year that 41% of employees now use generative AI in the workplace, while half of Americans use it outside of work (an increase of 31% and 26% year over year, respectively). In the Gallup survey, 70% of respondents said they are somewhat or extremely knowledgeable about AI, as compared with 64% two years prior.  Despite being more comfortable with the technology, workers are still worried about how it could impact their livelihood—in part because of how the business world has enthusiastically embraced it. According to Gallup, many Americans have little faith that companies will use AI responsibly, with only 27% of respondents saying they have at least some trust in businesses, a decrease from 31% last year. Much of their skepticism also seems driven by the belief that AI will kill jobs, even if that hasn’t been borne out yet in overall employment data. (Some employers even claim AI will spur them to hire more people.) Nearly eight in 10 people polled by Gallup said AI would slash jobs over the next decade, and there was a significant uptick among older and younger respondents relative to their concerns about job loss two years ago.  Many of these fears may have been stoked in the last year as major companies have repeatedly cited AI in their layoff announcements, even while some of them have insisted it’s not the primary reason. AI is likely just one of a constellation of factors behind corporate restructuring decisions—but that may be little comfort for workers who have more existential concerns about how AI could fundamentally alter their lives.

The fear that AI is killing jobs has been fueled by ongoing layoffs across corporate America, most recently at companies like Visa. Just this week, the payments giant revealed plans to shed 7% of its headcount, a move that will impact 2,600 employees. While Bloomberg reported that AI wasn’t the only factor driving the layoffs, CEO Ryan McInerney clearly cited it in his memo, noting AI would “shape the way work gets done at Visa.” Some of its peers, like PayPal, have also made bold cuts to their workforce in recent months. Companies in various sectors have been slashing customer service jobs, replacing some of them entirely with AI.  But as researchers have repeatedly pointed out, these layoffs still don’t point to widespread job displacement. In fact, a new report from ZipRecruiter suggests that some companies may actually be adding jobs due to AI. When ZipRecruiter surveyed over a thousand recruiters and hiring leaders, more than a third of them—nearly 35%—said AI will increase headcount at their company in the near future. Almost a quarter of them said hiring due to AI had already increased accordingly; over a third said AI had already enabled them to accelerate their recruiting process. Nearly as many respondents—32.5%—said the mix of jobs would change in the next three to five years as a result of AI, even if headcount didn’t dramatically change.  By comparison, the number of people who said they were actively hiring less due to AI was far smaller at 16%, and only 14.4% said they had plans to decrease headcount in the coming years. What does seem to be changing, however, is job expectations: Nearly three-quarters of people surveyed said AI skills were now either a major advantage or requirement for certain roles; over half of employers also expect that their workers will now be more productive.  Economists and researchers have warned for some time now that the narrative around AI-related job displacement is misleading and overestimates the impact of AI thus far. Even AI leaders like Sam Altman are now backing away from their assertions that the technology would eliminate jobs en masse. At companies like JPMorgan Chase, AI-related productivity gains have led to significant job changes in some divisions but have not meaningfully reduced overall headcount or expenses. “We are preparing to make sure we can retrain our people,” CEO Jamie Dimon said recently. “We have had discrete areas where we did reduce jobs by 30% or 40%, and most of those people [were] offered jobs elsewhere.” There is, however, evidence that entry level jobs are at risk: ZipRecruiter found that those jobs were particularly exposed and that nearly 40% of employers had started reassigning entry-level tasks—like data entry and processing—to AI. For almost a third of companies, AI has raised the bar for entry level candidates, a shift that echoes the experience of some young workers navigating the job market.  ZipRecruiter’s findings also captured another factor that might influence how employers talk about the effects of AI on their workforce. According to the survey, male respondents were more likely to say that AI would help create jobs at their company. This gender divide in how leaders think AI will impact jobs also reflects a broader split in sentiment between men and women. On the whole, women tend to be more skeptical of AI or worry about how it might impact them—and given they dominate some of the sectors that are most exposed to AI, it’s not hard to imagine why.

Employees across the workforce often collectively hold their breath in dread whenever another big company announces layoffs attributed to the work automating capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) tools. But new data suggests there’s another, stealthier threat to employment these days: the so-called “ghost downsizing” by smaller businesses that no longer fill vacated jobs, and spread their orphaned tasks to remaining staff and recently introduced apps. To be sure, managers asking survivors of layoffs to assume some of the work of their unlucky departing colleagues isn’t new. In the past, however, relief usually arrived when the financial pressures that led to reductions abated, allowing recruitment to resume. But that cycle may now be ending. A new survey by Polish tech research firm Omni Calculator found nearly a third of employees reporting “ghost downsizing” to be on the rise, often among employers automating tasks of newly vacated positions with AI. Work that apps can’t do is instead shifted to remaining staff, allowing managers “to maintain or increase output without proportional headcount growth,” a report on the findings said. ‘Gap between employee and executive perceptions’ But in stark contrast to large companies announcing big staff cuts as AI tools take over jobs, business leaders undertaking gradual, moderate phantom headcount reductions aren’t copping to the practice. A large portion of employee survey respondents, however, called their bosses out on it. “One of the survey’s central findings is a gap between employee and executive perceptions of workforce compression,” the report said. “Among employees surveyed, 30 percent said their team had shrunk while workload either increased or stayed the same. By comparison, 10 percent of executives reported the same pattern.” Identifying and quantifying those diverging views was a key objective of the survey. Not only did that measure staff views that “ghost downsizing” is afoot, but it also linked it to what may not always be visible effects of AI adoption. (T)hese findings suggest some AI-linked workforce changes may be occurring through hiring pauses, unfilled vacancies, and workload redistribution rather than through highly visible layoff announcements,” the report said. While AI-driven mass layoffs at corporations generate lots of headlines and analysis, the slower, gradual changes the tech is affecting in smaller businesses is far less evident. Indeed, the polls’ findings, seek “to help employers, employees, analysts, and the broader public better understand how AI adoption is appearing inside organizations before it is reflected in formal workforce-reduction disclosures,” the report said. Why is attaining greater clarity important? For starters, the very nature of “ghost downsizing” makes it harder to notice, and requires more time for staff to realize it has become a workplace factor. Meanwhile, in addition to diverging employee/management views on whether that headcount reduction is even happening, there are also and perception gaps, about how, why, and when AI is being adopted in smaller workplaces—as well as its impacts. For example, a surprising 43 percent of employees, and 53 percent of executives maintained that AI had in no way shaped hiring or headcount levels in their companies, despite evidence elsewhere strongly suggesting otherwise. Those surprising views may be an outgrowth of how the tech is often being passively introduced in many workplaces. Just 23 percent of responding business leaders said their companies had a formal AI preparation program, with a dedicated budget for it. Another 40 percent described AI transition in the workplace as an ad hoc, rather than organized process. Consensus on the jobs AI is haunting Despite their differences on whether “ghost downsizing” is at work in their companies—and whether introduction of AI is driving that—responding workers and managers agreed on other aspects of the tech’s spread.Nearly 60 percent of both employees and executives said “physical or hands-on work” reduced the risk of a job being automated away. A majority from both groups also cited strong “interpersonal communication skills” as another protective asset against being replaced by an app. Similarly, 38 percent of employers and 27 percent of workers said creativity and strategic thinking were strengths that AI would struggle to match. By contrast, remote work was viewed as particularly vulnerable to AI replacement. Fully 75 percent of those employees expressed fear of job loss from apps being used to perform them. That outlook was also supported by a recent Gallup poll indicating remote employees make up “a disproportionate share” of unemployed U.S. workers. Another big factor in fearing AI could lead to job loss was the income respondents are paid for their work.“Workers earning under $60,000 annually were nearly three times more likely to report actively planning a career exit due to automation than workers earning more than $100,000 annually,” the report said. “The survey found that higher-income workers were more likely to view AI as a productivity tool, while lower-income workers were more likely to view it as a direct employment risk.” That suggests that even as lower-paid employees struggle to get by on their comparatively modest incomes, they’re also increasingly haunted by the prospect of AI “ghost downsizing” their jobs away. —Bruce Crumley This article originally appeared on Fast Company’s sister website, Inc.com.  Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy.

The Washington Post describes a mid-tier executive at Meta as one of Silicon Valley's "winners" whose financial security suddenly "evaporated" as their workforce "pushed headlong into AI and heavy job cuts," creating a transformed job market. "Her ex-husband, a designer at Meta who was laid off in 2020, eventually gave up looking for jobs in his profession. He now lifts boxes at a warehouse." Layoffs.fyi, which tracks announced job cuts, counts more than 800,000 tech workers laid off since 2022, including large staff reductions in recent months at Meta, Microsoft, Oracle and Amazon... "There's this whole tranche of people who've been quite used to being among the most upwardly mobile in society who are all of a sudden saying, 'Now I'm the guy on the streetâs'" said Oliver Raskin, who founded Silicon Valley market research consultancy Signalcraft Insights and has surveyed attitudes in the tech labor force... "The rise of AI, especially, is bound to change the workplace radically," [said Georgetown University historian Joseph McCartin]. "But the way it's going to happen is similar to how technology transformed the auto industry." Ruth Milkman, a labor sociologist at the City University of New York, said that technology workers are getting a dose of what workers in other industries have long complained about: jobs that feel unsteady or rob them of autonomy. "Low-wage workers are used to it," she said... Many layoffs at technology companies are probably a hangover effect from over-hiring in prior years, experts say. And they don't account for a spotty recent increase in hiring in the information industry, which includes employment of software developers and jobs in media and entertainment. Digging deeper, though, some economists say there are signs that Silicon Valley and other technology-reliant parts of the American economy have reached a turning point where they are growing without needing as many people. The notion was encapsulated in a recent talk that ricocheted through group chats across the tech industry: In it, a partner at the start-up incubator Y Combinator heralded a new generation of AI-first companies that will only need human labor for "novel situations," "ethical considerations" and "high-stakes moments." Gad Levanon, chief economist at the labor research nonprofit Burning Glass Institute, said that the number of hours worked in the information sector has dipped since 2022, while the sector's economic output has increased by about 8 percent a year — more than three times the overall growth rate of the U.S. economy. He says the data reveals a sea change in industries, including technology and finance, toward doing more work with the same or fewer people — one that is spreading to other professional classes. "That's the new reality for white-collar and tech-exposed work: output up, headcount flat or down," Levanon said... Raskin, who has worked in the tech world since the late '90s, said that even though the current moment feels unsettling to many, he's hopeful that it's an early chapter in an evolving story. "It's happened many times before," he said, "that something implodes and all these people lose jobs, but then that talent gets cycled into whatever the next thing is — into a new wave of prosperity." In the article tech entrepreneur Anil Dash quips that Silicon Valley techies are "are guinea pigs for what tech dudes want to do to everyone." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Between shrinking entry-level gigs, mass layoffs and high rates of long-term unemployment, AI has been at the center of workers’ job loss fears.  Some tech executives have warned that AI could lead to job displacement, but others preach the exact opposite. One staunch believer that AI will actually create more jobs is Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. In a recent interview, Huang discussed the fast-paced advances in AI over the last six months, as well as the deployment of AI agents in the workplace across industries. He also doubled down on his belief that more AI usage means more new hires. “The more AI we use, somehow the more people we have to hire,” Huang said. “The reason for that is because these agentic systems are new skills.” “Now we have a lot of software engineers building agents,” he added. “They used to code software, but now they’re building agents. If you ask me, every one of my software engineers prefer to be building agents than to be writing Python code.” Huang likened coding to typing, adding that building and getting AI agents “to do things with us that we couldn’t do before” requires imagination and creativity. “The amount of work that we have to do to bring AI into the world is really quite incredible,” Huang said. “And so it’s creating a whole bunch of jobs.” Huang has been outspoken about the possibility for AI to create more jobs than it will take. During a May interview with Channel News Asia, he called AI a “lazy” excuse for layoffs.  “AI has just arrived,” Huang said at the time. “How is it possible they’re already losing jobs? How is it possible that AI became productive and useful only six months ago, and they were somehow laying people off two years ago because of AI?” “It doesn’t make any sense,” Huang added. “It was just a way for them to sound smart, and I really hate that.” Still, some companies have outwardly linked AI to mass layoffs. A report from outplacement and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas shows AI drove 25% of job cuts in March. Meta, Oracle and Block are just a handful of companies that have laid off thousands of employees because of AI adoption, or to offset spending on AI initiatives. In May, Standard Chartered CEO Bill Winters said the company would slash 7,000 jobs over the next four years to replace “lower-value human capital” with the tech. Some tech leaders, like Google’s former CEO Eric Schmidt, Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei and Amazon’s Andy Jassy, have been more vocal about the potential risks of AI job displacement—which Huang has not seemed unfazed by. “Now, finally, AI is useful,” Huang said in the interview. “And when AI is useful, every company in the world, every enterprise in the world, wants to get their hands on it.”