Is AI Being Made the ‘Villain’ in Mass Layoffs?

There is no debating the fact that the evolution of artificial intelligence globally has reached new heights these days. AI automation and alignment is very much real, and several global companies have started to adopt the same for their coding and backend process. 

On that note, several companies have even been firing employees at a large capacity, saying they are aligning with AI. Subsequently, even top companies like Google, Microsoft, Infosys and others have also started to fire several thousands of employees consistently. 

However, it is now being established that the evolution of AI is being overstated by several companies, and it is being used as an excuse to fire thousands of workers. This comment is not a generic one, but instead, it came from the CEO of ChatGPT Sam Altman himself.

Altman pointed out that the evolution of AI is very much happening, but that does not mean companies are in a position where they are having to find a significant portion of their global workforce. He pointed out that several companies could be using the excuse of AI to fire workers, just for the sake of it.

This was precisely when Sam made very interesting comment about “AI Washing”. He stated that companies would be using this method to overstate the prominence of AI automation and just use this to reduce workforce. He pointed out that this could be just attacked to cut down workers and amplify profits rather than AI alignment.

This is going to be a dangerous trend globally as companies have started to label AI as the villain and showing it as the reason why they are having to fire several thousands of workers almost on a monthly basis.

It was further pointed out that over hiring during the Covid pandemic and the subsequence slowdown in consumer demand has led to companies going for market correction. And now they have started to blame AI for their downsizing operations, which was naturally born to happen anyway.