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Fearing AI disruption, white-collar workers are quitting their jobs (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 3 days ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 60 points 3 days ago* (5 children)

While there’s no evidence linking AI to mass layoff

the last 3 years of layoffs due to ai says otherwise.

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  • [–] 57 points 3 days ago (3 children)

    Plenty of those layoffs used "AI" as a cover for the real reason. It looks better for the management board saying they are firing people because of increased efficiency (even if it's imaginary) than to say they overreached and underdelivered, and now the company has too many employees for what it can achieve.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 days ago

    You can sell expensive non-physical non-essential items of fashion positioning them as something everyone needs for only so long.

    I mean, it's also even a bit of AI, but mostly that IT as important and in demand as it was is not compatible with being divided between a few gigantic monopolists with no good will whatsoever.

    Less meaningful social activity happens in that suppressed environment, meaning less business.

    And what happens, is being optimized, yes, because when thousands of well-paid developers are doing roughly the same things again and again, that can be optimized.

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  • [–] -1 points 3 days ago (1 child)

    easy to hire easy to fire

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  • [–] 3 points 2 days ago

    Well actually no. Outside of the US you can't just fire people, you have to find some sort of justification and AI provides one that no one can really question.

    AI is a technology that does exist, and it definitely is causing some disruption, while there is a question mark over how much disruption is really attributed to AI efficiency gains, you cannot demonstrably prove that any particular redundancy wasn't because of AI. So it would be very difficult to win a case of unfair dismissal.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 days ago*

    Well where I work is currently on a hiring freeze reportedly because of AI, but I just found that a bit suspicious because we've been on a freeze for three years I'm sure that AI of 3 years ago wasn't good enough to justify the hiring freeze. It can't have anything to do with the fact that we keep losing major clients to our competitors due to corporate mismanagement. No it's definitely AI that's the problem.

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