KI-Entlassungen ähneln immer mehr Unternehmensfiktion, die eine dunklere Realität verschleiert, schlägt Oxford Economics vor | Vermögen
https://fortune.com/2026/01/07/ai-layoffs-convenient-corporate-fiction-true-false-oxford-economics-productivity/
KI-Entlassungen ähneln immer mehr Unternehmensfiktion, die eine dunklere Realität verschleiert, schlägt Oxford Economics vor | Vermögen
https://fortune.com/2026/01/07/ai-layoffs-convenient-corporate-fiction-true-false-oxford-economics-productivity/
23 Kommentare
*I’m shocked. Shocked!*
*….well, not that shocked.*
I’m probably not going to explain this well:
There’s a sub plot in Asimov’s foundation books that points out the absurdity of a certain kind of academia that does not research for itself, it merely consumes other people’s work and spits out it’s own flawed conclusions without any interaction with the real world.
Anytime I hear about AI, I think about that story.
Edit: perhaps ironically I just used AI to find the character’s name Lord Dorwin, a symbol of stagnation.
From the article:
“We suspect some firms are trying to dress up layoffs as a good news story rather than bad news, such as past over-hiring.”
The primary motivation for this rebranding of job cuts appears to be investor relations. The report notes that attributing staff reductions to AI adoption “conveys a more positive message to investors” than admitting to traditional business failures, such as weak consumer demand or “excessive hiring in the past.” By framing layoffs as a technological pivot, companies can present themselves as forward-thinking innovators rather than businesses struggling with cyclical downturns.
Saying AI causes layoffs is like saying toilet paper makes people shit. No, people have been shitting for centuries. Likewise, companies have been laying people off for decades. It was never the AI, so this silly little article is just pointless words in the void. They will come up with any reason to lay off workers. Activision used to do it right after record profits
Interesting point in the article: If AI was actually replacing fired workers per worker productivity would be going up – It’s going down. Companies are branding layoffs as AI transition to mask miss-management during a down turn.
Let’s say you run a company that’s sucking wind because you’re horrible at your job: Do a few rounds of layoffs – but instead of admitting you’re a dipshit, buy a crap-ton of co-pilot licenses and get your PR department to spew AI-AI-AI-AI.
AI layoffs miss the factor in which the point of most jobs is keeping people attached to the system and too busy to revolt.
If you say you fired people because of your bad management and wrong planning, profit drops. If you say you fired people because of AI, profit grows.
You still need technical people. AI can vastly improve productivity but you still need people who can understand the outputs.
Think about it you build something entirely using AI, but no one knows how it actually works. What happens if it breaks and no one knows how to fix it and the AI is hallucinating? It is a tool that needs to be used by talented people. The real risk here is the stagnation of senior technical knowledge as people retire.
Head count reductions might be possible or instead productivity and outputs are vastly improved. Take your pick.
99% of software developers have been saying AI is just a scapegoat for being able to do layoff for reason that have nothing to do with AI
AI has proven to be incredibly powerful at 3 things:
1. biomedical research
2. programming & math
3. pumping out useless slop for corporate profits
Duh… been saying this for over a year, but calling it a „darker reality“ is hyperbole, it’s just business as usual this shit happens all the time. Next they’ll act surprised that companies outsourced and then announced that they’re bringing jobs back like they’re just pro-America instead of the fact that the outsourcing was an abject disaster.
At this point in time, yes it clearly seems to be the case.
At this point I’m convinced none of the companies are actually using AI for much but they’re all convinced everyone else is and are scared shitless that they’ll be left out. They’re looking for problems to which AI can be a solution, even if there’s better solutions out there.
They weren’t fooling anyone but the biggest idiots alive the whole time they’ve been saying this
AI is the scapegoat for all the problems in overconsumption and capitalism . The problem child in a shit family system lol
This is obvious. Everyone knew this already. They did it with RTO.
„Never let a disaster go to waste“
If true though this is bullish for the labour class.
Shocking no one with a brain
You can have AI or you can have better quality, however you can’t have both!
AI is a hype, a scapegoat used to cover up the bad corporate policies of over hiring. Doesn’t mean that things are getting more efficient since AI doesn’t know how to think for itself with the training dataset (ie: hallucinating is inherent in the models).
‘AI’ is the new ‘Remote Work is killing productivity’ bogeyman being used for layoffs now. While there are plenty of jobs that AI/LLMs will capture across multiple industries it’s not as widespread as the corporate overlords would have us believe.
Anyone actually using AI knows what a technical marvel and also what a stupid child it is. Despite the hype, it’s barely being utilized in everyday businesses outside of tech (and even within it), and when it is, it’s done in such a manner that it leaves the user worse off for many real tasks. Not to mention the AI companies themselves are highly volatile, providing good outputs one day and garbage the next, if their APIs don’t go down suddenly.
Workflows and best practices surrounding AI will take a few years to mature, and even longer in slower-changing sectors. It predicts tokens eerily well—that does not translate to replacing labor.
Any labor market fluctuations we’re seeing today have 0% to do with AI providing meaningful productivity gains, and are caused entirely by the economic chaos being sewn by a certain someone and companies laying off their hugely bloated Covid hires under the guise of productivity gains that don’t exist.
The only people losing jobs due to AI will be the dinosaurs who refuse to adapt and learn new technology.