AI layoffs or ‘AI-washing’?

In Brief

How galore of the companies with caller layoffs are genuinely adapting their workforces to the efficiencies and challenges of artificial intelligence? And however galore of them were conscionable utilizing AI arsenic an excuse to screen different problems?

That’s the question posed by a New York Times article connected the inclination of “AI-washing,” wherever companies volition mention AI arsenic the crushed for layoffs that mightiness really beryllium caused by different factors, similar over-hiring during the pandemic.

AI was the stated crushed for much than 50,000 layoffs successful 2025, with Amazon and Pinterest among the tech companies who blamed the exertion for caller cuts.

But a Forrester study published successful January argued, “Many companies announcing A.I.-related layoffs bash not person mature, vetted A.I. applications acceptable to capable those roles, highlighting a inclination of ‘A.I.-washing’ — attributing financially motivated cuts to aboriginal A.I. implementation.”

Molly Kinder, a elder probe chap astatine the Brookings Institute, noted that saying layoffs were caused by AI is simply a “very investor-friendly message,” particularly erstwhile the alternate mightiness mean admitting, “The concern is ailing.”

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