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Comment by mr_toad | Hacker News Reader

> Meanwhile the AI fad is seeing huge layoffs.

This is really the only point I disagree with. Layoffs are being blamed on AI, but they are really a hangover of the covid hiring boom, and subsequent bust.

All the tech money is going into building data centres (and the gas turbines that power data centres), and it turns out that programmers don’t have the relevant skills to build gas turbines.

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> Layoffs are being blamed on AI, but they are really a hangover of the covid hiring boom.

The world's most convenient virus.

A few months ago I’d have been right there with you; however recently there have been a number of high profile multi-thousand-head layoffs attributed to budget pressure of deploying AI - and so technically it’s more of an indirect rather than “a robot stole my job” replacement, but still causal. Those tokens will be “doing” labor, rather than the human.

Workers at many of these companies are being required to use AI each day, not because AI is such vaporware that it has to be pushed, but because making employees use it creates trainable datasets to further improve it, further automate work, further put pressure on headcount. A very worrying cycle on top of the already rapidly improving real capabilities of AI.

Most companies are showing high revenue and profit and still laying off huge segments of their workforce. Largely due to the stock market - a lot of non-AI players are facing lowering stock price.

High revenue and profit are not relevant - employees cost money, so if company feels it could do without them, the layoffs happen. Low revenue and loss would be another reason for layoffs too, of course.

And building gas turbines (or even designing them) are probably not jobs that pay salaries developers got accustomed to, especially in Sillicon Valley, over the last 10-20 years.

Jobs at GE in Schenectady may not be what those developers are looking for even if they were qualified.

No, but it's a fun line for any automotive or other old-industry workers to throw at programmers, as they were the ones promised re-training in industries they would have to start from the bottom in.

There are a bunch of factors that are intertwining. And unfortunately, some specific demographics are mostly those being most caught in the crosshairs.

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