Eric Siu argues that companies blame AI for layoffs as a convenient excuse. MIT economist David Autor agrees that large enterprises haven't yet realized AI efficiencies big enough to justify mass cuts. Most layoffs stem from COVID-era hiring bloat and profitability problems instead.
Check out this quote from— this is on NBC News. This is from David Autor, professor of economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, right? Right. So they're talking about the recent layoffs and people saying it's AI. It's much easier for companies to say we are laying off because we're realizing AI-related efficiencies than to say we're laying off because we're not that profitable or bloated or facing a slowing economic environment. That's the reality. Like, you and I work with so many large companies, and we're not seeing— when we work with these companies in different departments, we're not seeing AI make everything so efficient where they can just lay off 10,000+ people. I just don't think most companies are really generating— at least enterprise companies are generating that much of an ROI from a lot of this AI right now. I think the big problem that you see in the corporate world is there's a lot of people getting paid and they're not doing much and they could just be getting fired and that'll create the downward jobs. I just think companies right now are really bloated. I think COVID really made a lot of companies bloated and most of them have not resized from it.
