Is Big Tech Now Backpedaling on the AI Jobs Wipeout Scenario?
9 81"A year ago, the message from many business leaders was that AI was going to wipe out jobs," remembers the Wall Street Journal.But "For the past month or so, tech CEOs have been striking a more optimistic tone." In late May, OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman — who has long predicted that AI will lead to seismic shifts in the workforce — said during a conference, "We've been roughly right on technological predictions and pretty wrong on the social and economic implications." Soon after, he told CNBC, "Our industry underestimated how much we're going to be able to keep people at the center of everything."
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who warned in May 2025 that artificial intelligence could eliminate half of entry-level jobs, a year later highlighted more positive scenarios for AI-adopting businesses: "They can do the same thing with less resources, and that leads to things like layoffs, or they can do more with the same amount of resources. But that requires creativity...."
Is the sunnier outlook a move to win back customers and the public who are souring on AI's world-upending promise? Or is the role of AI in the workplace now just better understood...?
Collectively, the narrative has shifted from worker-light doomsday scenarios caused by AI to a future in which workers keep their jobs — and get a productivity boost. The sentiment change isn't limited to tech leaders: A survey by EY-Parthenon found that the percentage of CEOs who believe AI investments will result in significant reductions in head count fell from around 46% in January 2025 to just 20% this May. "They may have noticed that the labor market is genuinely not changing (i.e., imploding) as rapidly as they expected," said David Autor, a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "They may have realized it was simply bad business to say that your great new product will destroy the economy."
The article notes Amazon founder Jeff Bezos "has a history of predicting that AI will create new jobs," and in June said AI could even lead to a labor shortage. "When asked on CNBC in May about people being afraid of AI taking jobs, he said the reason they're afraid is because 'all these smart people keep saying that.'"
The article then adds that "Fewer people are saying it now."
9 comments
I see potential in AI CEO agents... (Score: 5, Insightful)
by Lavandera ( 7308312 ) on Monday July 06, 2026 @04:15AM (#66224454)
Profits should be huge...
Replacing 7 or 8 figures CEO with $2k AI agent...
Bull Hockey (Score: 5, Insightful)
by gtall ( 79522 ) on Monday July 06, 2026 @04:55AM (#66224478)
The only reason they are changing their tune is because of the backlash to them putting data centers in our backyards and vacuuming up the cash we'll be spending on electricity bills. Do not trust them, they do not deserve it.
Re:Bull Hockey (Score: 5, Interesting)
by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Monday July 06, 2026 @08:36AM (#66224680)
I don't think it is really about the backlash so much as the value of the AI is going to replace soooo many people narrative has played out.
Amodei, Altman, et al needed massive amount of capital to buy a compute hardware by the ton as well as the facilities to house it and the power to run it. Jensen Huang can only funnel so much of NVIDIAs own money to its customers to buy its own products without the markets crying foul, turned out they could push that much further than I would have initially expected but still limits exist (at least in theory). So to make it possible for everyone to keep doubling down, they needed a story growth story like never before to keep soaking up all those investment dollars.
The reality is starting to overcome the rumor, with Ford bringing back engineers, Microsoft having to back pedal on CoPilot features, the PC market not exploding because of people wanting by new machines that are AI ready.
Now that the idea every business is going to be able to drip 30% of work force and/or the compute resources can be rented or capitalized cheaper even if they could is getting harder push, they have been pivoting to AI is so dangerous... Defense contractors, the DOD directly, and F500 financial engineering space have stupid amounts of money and can be relied upon to spend it out fear the other guy might show up the party with fancier toys. Those guys actually have more concrete applications for this tech any way. - At least something better than hey lets provide an agent to help you navigate our product offerings but rather than deliver a consistent experience with Dialog Flow or similar for 15 years ago, we use and LLM that will cost 10x to run and occasionally fail in spectacularly embarrassing ways..
Re:Bull Hockey (Score: 5, Insightful)
by evanh ( 627108 ) on Monday July 06, 2026 @08:40AM (#66224696)
The real reason is because LLMs are crap and aren't achieving the gains that they predicted. Which, as you've pointed out, is also going to bite them hard for overspending on the data-centres.
Re:The only reason? (Score: 5, Insightful)
by butt0nm4n ( 1736412 ) on Monday July 06, 2026 @11:10AM (#66224954)
Nope, the explanation is simpler than that.
Marketing. Stock pumping.
My tech is so good it can replace humans. My tech is so good its dangerous, you better get it before someone else does.
High noise to signal ratio. AI offers some advantages in cognitive support in some roles, would have been a more honest assessment.
Apart from AI companies I haven't heard one commercial success story of applying the AI that is being punted at the moment.
It's great at making content, but that wasn't a problem. It's great at search and summary, maybe better than search, but it is too convincing when it gets it wrong, so its not reliable. It's a weak product.
On the upside in a few years there is going to be buckets of spare compute power around. Maybe science can use that to solve some real problems rather than these bullshit ones AI pundits are trying to find and solve.
PR Game (Score: 5, Insightful)
by aaarrrgggh ( 9205 ) on Monday July 06, 2026 @05:06AM (#66224490)
They have to paint a pretty picture or the backlash will be too restrictive for their goals. The problem is the technology is a long way off and they need a lot of "concessions" to buy that time.
Making Money Fixing AI Code (Score: 5, Interesting)
by BinBoy ( 164798 ) on Monday July 06, 2026 @05:44AM (#66224512)
I've been paid to fix AI code. Saving time having AI generate code for me? Meh. It saves a few minutes handing off tedious stuff like writing SQL queries and helper functions but for anything major it needs a lot of review and it can waste time taking you in circles.
"Our industry overestimated how much of" (Score: 5, Insightful)
by Growlley ( 6732614 ) on Monday July 06, 2026 @06:43AM (#66224552)
our own bullshit we believed.
Not In My Industry (Score: 5, Interesting)
by DewDude ( 537374 ) on Monday July 06, 2026 @08:12AM (#66224656)
Our clients are losing customers because they're ditching humans for AI. There's still plenty of people who are anxious to eliminate as many human positions as possible.
Big Tech can say whatever it wants...when every other business is sitting there saying "we're going to go to the company with AI that's 80% cheaper"....well...big tech doesn't control those jobs. Those jobs are getting wiped out.