In some cases, tech companies have made it clear they are cutting staff so they can spend more on the agents that will replace them.
“These layoffs are not caused by AI or automation, but by the massive capital expenditure going into AI, with the hope that we figure it out soon,” Pratik Ratadiya, a tech executive, wrote on X.
Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, recently told staff in an internal meeting: “We basically have two major cost centers in the company: compute infrastructure and people-oriented things. If we’re investing more in one area … then that means we do need to take down the size of the company somewhat.”
Analysts at Bernstein predicted that if the company was successful, it could trigger a cascade of attempts to follow it.
“If one major player is able to redraw the blueprint for an AI-enabled organisation, others will rush to replicate it … and we wonder if this could trigger a cascade of hurried pivots, half-formed strategies, and reactive restructuring across the ecosystem,” Mark Shmulik, an analyst, said.
Meta employees may not be on board with that vision. Those that have escaped the company’s recent job cuts have complained of being dragged into menial work developing training data for AI.
The company recently started tracking employees’ mouse movements and keyboard clicks in an effort to train AI on how to use computers. It suspended the programme last week after it emerged that some of the data collected by the company were exposed to all employees.
There are no signs the automation drive is slowing down, however. It was reported last week that the tech giant would be outsourcing almost all of its content moderation to AI systems in an attempt to cut costs.
Overseeing hordes of bots does not necessarily sound like the golden ticket that a Silicon Valley career was supposed to be.
“Tech jobs had a good run,” one employee wrote on Blind. “Gonna be over soon.”
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