AI is just the disguise. It's the economy, just like it is in every recession.
One example client that shouldn't dox me: Odom Corporation, a beverage distributor. They purchased an LLM-driven purchasing solution and immediately laid off their entire purchasing team, save for a few members who exist on the periphery. A follow-up with them showed that the system was ordering summer beverages coming into the winter (among many other bad purchasing decisions) and causing a dramatic increase in unsold inventory. Since they believe that LLMs will exponentially improve, they're dismissing it as a one-off because this year's models "will be so much better". We attempted to advise differently, but stakeholders got extremely emotional at even small suggestions that there was a fundamental problem. Good luck to them.
I also think some of the companies that operate in the AI space are using the layoffs as a form of marketing to prove the capabilities of their tech (while also using it as an excuse to cut costs).
Anyways, I work at one of the major players in the space and the amount of AI code slop I see on a daily basis is absurd. My prediction is that within two years most younger SWEs will only have a high-level understanding of their code. I already see it happening.
Now, this is extremely short-sighted and frankly it makes me question the intelligence of these BigCos' executives, because unless they're utterly incompetent at this whole "business" and "living on the planet earth" thing they should have realized that the economy fluctuates and this infinite free money wouldn't last.
Now that AI is around, these companies finally have a way to do these layoffs while not looking quite as idiotic.
You really have to be in "the room where it happens" to know the motivations behind any one layoff.