Ask HN: If AI boosts productivity so much, why would a company lay anyone off?

There isn't enough work to justify 10,000 employees. There are diminishing returns.

If there wasn't enough work how would they have been hired in the first place?

There isn't enough work for 10,000 employees using AI.

If the company is growing why would the work just suddenly run out?

> Say hypothetically the productivity boost from AI is 2x per employee

I believe this is a bad assumption. Most likely the boost is not normally distributed. So, although all employees become more productive, some employees become much more productive thereby making the others redundant.

As someone pointed out already... there are diminishing returns. In addition, there are marginal returns. Put the two together and you get ever diminishing marginal returns from the laggard employees.

Because laying people off makes more profit for the owners.