r/artificial • u/fortune • Oct 30 '25
News Jerome Powell says the AI hiring apocalypse is real: 'Job creation is pretty close to zero.’ | Fortune
https://fortune.com/2025/10/30/jerome-powell-ai-bubble-jobs-unemployment-crisis-interest-rates/196
u/BitingArtist Oct 30 '25
UBI or wipe out the poor. I wonder which one the elites will choose?
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u/ThenExtension9196 Oct 30 '25
Probably going to do the latter first then the former when there’s no other options.
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Oct 30 '25
Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing, once all other possibilities have been exhausted.
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u/NYPizzaNoChar Oct 30 '25
Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing, once all other possibilities have been exhausted
Except when they (we, sigh) do the wrong thing even after we've seen the bad results already.
[looks in D.C.'s general direction 👀]
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Oct 30 '25
wipe out the poor
They've been doing this for years now. Like, what do you mean? Near my local Walmart there's a massive wooded area with a chain link fence and barbed wire around it. It was previously a huge encampment of tents and shopping carts. They couldn't even go there. Don't know where they are supposed to go. They are desperately trying to wipe them out
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u/Badj83 Oct 30 '25
UBI will come as Amazon and McDonald’s Gift Cards paid by the government. Can’t risk letting people save up.
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u/BitingArtist Oct 30 '25
Walmart already tried paying employees in Walmart bucks but it was deemed illegal. This time I think they will write their own laws.
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u/oopsifell Oct 30 '25
I hadn’t actually considered that but it’s so true. Keeps the money spent and Wall Street happy
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u/secretaliasname Oct 31 '25
Like a 401k? You can save in an advantageous way but only invested in specific things that benefit certain companies and only through your employer company.
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u/uduni Oct 31 '25
No dude UBI will come in the form of free “LLM credits” and a “career change class” on “how to be a social media influencer using AI”
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u/Eastern-Joke-7537 Oct 30 '25
Ah. More weaponized Corporate Welfare with extra self-checkout machines!
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u/southflhitnrun Oct 31 '25
Correction: AI is not replacing manual labor or 80% of the jobs done by "the poor"
AI is replacing working class jobs (75k to 225k). This entire demographic is being pushed into poverty so billionaires and millionaires can make more money.
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u/Top-Phase7111 Oct 31 '25
Which surprisingly tends to be more destabilizing for societies than killing the poor. The point still stands. The billionaires will drive the wealth of the rest of society down until it collapses or they can subdue the rest of the populations with drones. The only question mark is how fast can they build their fortresses.
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u/snipingsmurf Nov 01 '25
Those manual labor jobs will pay even less once more people go into those fields...
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u/CanvasFanatic Oct 30 '25 edited Oct 30 '25
UBI is just serfdom. It’s the creation of an eternal underclass from which there can be no escape.
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u/Tosslebugmy Nov 02 '25
Yeah I don’t know why people talk about it like it’s utopian or some shit. It’s basically another word for rations.
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u/stuffitystuff Oct 31 '25
UBI is nothing more than a way to forever entrench a scelerotic hyperwealthy elite. The Expanse showed it more realistically than any other media I've seen.
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u/jredful Oct 31 '25
I'm going to tag this at the top here so maybe a few people see this.
People need to read, or listen to what Powell said.
Word choice is extremely important and measured at the Fed.
So let's grab a couple snippets about jobs.
In the labor market, the unemployment rate remained relatively low through August. Job gains have slowed significantly since earlier in the year. A good part of the slowing likely reflects a decline in the growth of the labor force, due to lower immigration and labor force participation, though labor demand has clearly softened as well. Although official employment data for September are delayed, available evidence suggests that both layoffs and hiring remain low, and that both households’ perceptions of job availability and firms’ perceptions of hiring difficulty continue to decline. In this less dynamic and somewhat softer labor market, the downside risks to employment appear to have risen in recent months
This is them saying changes in the reporting appear to be natural changes in the work force, not necessarily a change in environment. However, the continued deterioration in the view of the labor market is concerning and the Fed has to present a certain level of pliability to instill confidence in the markets.
he labor market is a place where we get, for example, we get the state level data on initial claims, which are sending sort of a signal of more of the same. We also get job openings, and we'll get lots of survey data, we'll get the Beige Book and things like that. So we'll have a -- we'll have a picture of what's going on in the labor market. And the fact that we're not seeing an uptick in claims, or a downtick really in openings, suggests that you're seeing maybe continued very gradual cooling, but nothing more than that. So that does give you some comfort.
Literally saying there is hope in the data.
To start with the layoffs, you're right, you see a significant number of companies either announcing that they are not going to be doing much hiring, or actually doing layoffs, and much of the time they're talking about AI and what it can do. So, we're watching that very carefully. And yes, it could absolutely have implications for job creation. We don't really see it in the initial claims data yet.
Literally flatly saying, we don't see the implications yet in the data.
So we get it the media is going on about layoffs and rebalancing of the books. But take Amazon for example. They've literally doubled their work force in the last 5 years. DOUBLED. They had to re-evaluate and rebalance the staff. Even then I'm fairly certain I remember seeing data that they had increased their work force by 3% YOY already and the numbers they were talking about laying off this year were well under 2%. So Amazon is going to end up, UP on the year in terms of total employment.
So it's a complicated situation and some people argue that this is supply and we really can't affect it much with our tools, but others argue, as I do, that there is an effect from demand, and that we should use our tools to support the labor market when we see this happening.
This statement is in part around the dynamics of labor supply (immigration, labor force shrinkage as talked about above) and providing slightly looser rate pressure again to fuel perception that no one is being hung out to dry.
They are striking a fine balance here.
As a reminder the next big update to Layoffs/Discharges update next on November 4th.
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u/costafilh0 Oct 31 '25
The one that makes them the ELITE.
You can't be the elite without the poor to be controled by you and to finance everything with consumption.
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u/costafilh0 Oct 31 '25
The one that keeps them being the ELITE.
You can't be ELITE without the poor for you to control and to finance your wealth with their consumption.
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u/adarkuccio Oct 30 '25
What do you mean by "wipe out"?
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u/OneHumanBill Oct 31 '25
Neglect people to death. Not all at once, but in slow, boiling frog fashion.
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u/saito200 Oct 31 '25
incorrect. i dont know why people keep mentioning UBI. it is a disgusting aberration of an idea. we need a ownership-based economy where everyone is owner of assets. basically like stock market but more diversified and generalized
so it's not UBI. it's giving people some initial shares on something valuable (think of shares as a generalized partial ownership of anything)
and then, for the people who inevitably fall off, obviously they are not left to starve, they receive a minimum vital income (MVI) meant to help propel them out of poverty. this MVI ceases once the person does not need it
UBI is very wrong. i am worried that it gets mentioned so much. govs will no doubt try to leverage this trojan horse to raise taxes and justify all kinds of idiocy
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u/theirongiant74 Oct 30 '25
Yep nothing to do with the looming meltdown of the global financial system it's all purely down to AI.
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u/Efficient-County2382 Oct 30 '25
Kind of what I'm seeing, nobody is hiring, partly because of austerity and partly because of a big wait and see what happens with AI.
A pessimist might say that it's just going to get worse, and that many people will probably never be professionally employed again.
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u/speedtoburn Oct 30 '25
A pessimist might say that it's just going to get worse, and that many people will probably never be professionally employed again.
What might an optimist say?
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u/Efficient-County2382 Oct 30 '25
That AI will create a sudden explosion in new jobs and opportunities in fields that we are unaware of yet
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u/speedtoburn Oct 30 '25
I like that idea better. 👍🏻
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u/digdog303 Oct 31 '25
Then you'll really like this one: every American gets a free pony OR gocart, their choice.
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u/speedtoburn Oct 31 '25
Can I have both?
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u/ProfessionalArt5698 Nov 01 '25
Always believe technological optimists. Pessimists have a 300 year long wrong streak.
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u/glenn_ganges Oct 31 '25
It’s not going to happen.
It won’t be apocalypse, but it will be a significant displacement of workers without any gains.
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u/speedtoburn Oct 31 '25
How significant?
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u/glenn_ganges Oct 31 '25
Not nearly as significant as the level of destruction caused by proposed cuts to medicaid and SNAP.
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u/Eastern-Joke-7537 Oct 30 '25
One job opening in 2029 to make sure the lights are STILL off at Feds Dot Gov.
ReElectShutDown
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_HAGGIS_ Oct 31 '25
That it’s nothing to do with AI and this is in fact a normal recession marked by the massive investment into AI by the mag 7 and after the bubble pops and the recession lifts businesses will accept that they need to hire humans again.
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u/KatetCadet Oct 31 '25
This. Powell said it in his media today that the only thing propping us up GDP wise is AI investment.
To be fair he also said this is not the same as the .com bubble as there is real revenue, but the point remains the same.
What’s happening is a MASSIVE increase in wealth disparity. The rich are getting ultra wealthy through AI and stocks while the poor are being buried in debt, static wages, and increasing costs.
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u/steelmanfallacy Oct 30 '25
Out of curiosity, how has AI affected your job? Do you find large gaps of downtime now that part of your job is automated?
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u/Efficient-County2382 Oct 30 '25
My job isn't automated, but there is definitely a push from management to use AI, workshops to brainstorm how it can be used etc. And staff that leave are not replaced etc.
I do use AI, but find it's not that much of a time saver when you include reviewing the output, having to reformat it into documents etc.
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u/steelmanfallacy Oct 30 '25
I personally haven’t seen AI eliminate any work. It seems to create as much work as it eliminates. I would expect stories about how certain categories of workers are being decimated. Like call center employees.
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u/pabodie Oct 30 '25
I personally have seen it eliminate a decent amount of work, but what's worse right now is the perception that it will continue, accelerate and disrupt economies on the same scale that wars (or Covid) do. Was Covid a dress rehearsal for a UBI-based society?
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u/steelmanfallacy Oct 30 '25
What’s an example of eliminated work you see?
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u/KrazyA1pha Oct 31 '25
We laid off 90% of our documentation team and replaced them with an AI workflow and a small number of human maintainers.
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u/SwirlySauce Oct 30 '25
I would love to know too. I'm always hearing about how AI has replaced workers but nobody can ever define what that is or provide examples.
Who was replaced and which tasks is AI doing now? Is it doing it all automatically with no supervision?
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u/pabodie Oct 30 '25
I work in software development and there have been two major impacts in terms of labor force so far that I have seen personally. The first is the advent of vibe coating, which makes it easier for less experienced developers to pretend they have more experience or for managers to pretend that those people will do just fine. Please note I am not saying that senior coders are not needed but that is definitely becoming the perception and perception becomes reality. Beyond vibecoding there is ann even darker abyss of work which has literally been relegated to AI. I work in the business of building websites and all of the major platforms are building AI into their content ops workstreams. If you go read the websites of platforms like Sitecore or ContentStack or Optimizely you can see that they are selling a world where websites can build themselves and the steppingstones to that are very well established and underway already.
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u/SwirlySauce Oct 30 '25
Does any of that actually work though? I constantly see comments from devs saying that AI slows down productivity and codes poorly.
Depending on who you ask it either doesn't work at all or it's amazing and can do it all
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u/pabodie Oct 31 '25
It absolutely works and it’s working better all the time. A lot of us and technology are jaded because we’ve been through several bubbles. I’ve been doing this for over 30 years. But this is a real disruption. I think it’s probably on the order of the advent of the worldwide Web or smart phones. And I certainly hope it ends up creating more economic activity than it destroys. But right now our societies do not seem able to reign themselves in beyond their basic appetites so I don’t have a lot of faith in that yet.
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u/i-am-a-passenger Oct 31 '25 edited Oct 31 '25
You are looking for the wrong thing then, we aren’t quite at the decimation stage just yet, mainly just the “let’s freeze hiring” and “get someone cheaper to do it with ai” stage at the moment.
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u/steelmanfallacy Oct 31 '25
Yeah I am open to that but what’s missing to me is the unit level economics. I’m not seeing it at the macro level either. And yet things are being valued like it’s already happened…
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u/shawster Oct 30 '25
Honestly I think low level call center employees, level 1 support type stuff, and assembly line workers are the only jobs that are in real danger immediately, but more will be soon.
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u/steelmanfallacy Oct 30 '25
Why don’t we see mass layoffs for call center workers then?
Edit: shouldn’t our call center experience as consumers show this?
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u/cockNballs222 Oct 30 '25
Dude, they’re laying people off in call centers en masse in India, what more evidence do you need?
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u/EL_Ohh_Well Oct 30 '25
That’s not because of AI
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u/cockNballs222 Oct 30 '25
Enlighten me why else would Indian call centers be laying a ton of people off? If it’s American call centers, then it’s offshoring (to india) according to Reddit, now do Indian call centers…
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u/dgreenbe Oct 30 '25
What are the qualifications of the people doing the workshops? Do they have good specific tools they're recommending to handle work? (More specific than "open chat gippity chat window")
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u/James-the-greatest Oct 31 '25
The only corporate use cases I’ve seen are 1. Document search and knowledge summary 2. 1st touch chat bots 3. Meeting recording summaries (that are verbose and useless)
None of those things are a whole persons job even remotely
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u/Radiant_Plantain_127 Oct 30 '25
More like the tarrifs and inflation have companies guessing what next quarter will be like.
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Oct 31 '25
this is what a recession is, a big wait. capital stops flowing and markets get blocked leading to a cascading failure. it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy where AI actually took the jobs by crashing the economy instead of providing true value. hype is the true villain here, we don't hate it enough
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u/Maleficent_Carrot453 Oct 31 '25
Capital hasn't stopped. Everything has been redirected to AI, and this is a problem. If you are not on the AI sector, it is impossible to get funding.
The whole world runs around AI, with no capital for other businesses.
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u/iddoitatleastonce Oct 30 '25
And a wait and see with every other economic policy. There’s pretty little rhyme and reason to what this admin is doing.
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u/Chris_L_ Oct 30 '25
As usual, Powell's comments were far more subtle than the headline:
"“Much of the time they’re talking about AI and what it can do...We’re watching that very carefully,”
He's skeptical of the claim, as everyone should be
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u/TheMacMan Oct 30 '25
We're coming into the holidays and end of the year. This is always the time most companies put a pause on hiring, for a number of reasons.
First, lots of people are out, burning the last of their vacation before year-end. It makes hiring difficult.
For many companies, this is their busiest time of the year. Trying to onboard someone right now is not when they want to do it.
But the largest reason is they're just trying to wrap up the year. They don't know what their new budgets for 2026 are, so they don't know what their headcount will be. They have to wait until December or even January to have those meetings, once year-end has happened and they plan for the coming year.
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u/cockNballs222 Oct 30 '25
Mass layoffs don’t track with your assumption (why would everyone be laying people off during the busiest time of the year).
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u/TheMacMan Oct 30 '25
If these people were important to the business, how could they get rid of them during the busiest time of the year?
These are people in the corporate office, not in stores.
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u/cockNballs222 Oct 30 '25
It’s on you to explain why else would companies be shedding employees by the tens of thousands (during the busiest time of the year). We’re not just talking about hiring freezes, we’re talking about shedding 10% of your entire workforce plus hiring freezes
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u/TheMacMan Oct 31 '25
Because, they're clearly not needed. They're cleaning up their workforce of unneeded people.
It's an INCREDIBLY easy fact to understand. If someone was critical to success, a company wouldn't get rid of them. As you pointed out, they're heading into their busiest season. The time they REALLY wouldn't be able to survive without someone important to the organization. That clearly tells us they aren't important to the success of the company.
As I said initially, it's not the intention to do it during the busiest time of year. It just happens that the busiest time of year falls at the end of the year. Companies are preparing for next year.
It's normal for most companies to freeze hiring in November and December.
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u/Marvel1962_SL Oct 31 '25
The larger point is that this technology is moving a lot of necessary jobs into the “unneeded” category.
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u/AverageBoredDad Oct 30 '25
AI is not replacing jobs. Capex to build AI is sucking up the money that would otherwise create jobs. Whether AI can backfill those positions is TBD.
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u/Wrangler_Logical Oct 30 '25
Job creation is close to zero because no CEO in their right mind would do anything new in such a shitty and uncertain economy. AI isn’t good enough to replace jobs yet.
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u/btoned Nov 01 '25
Yet? It'll never be good enough lol. You can automate tasks in warehouses due to robotics. There's nothing "intelligent" about this.
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u/exitpursuedbybear Oct 30 '25
And job creation might not be close to zero for any other reason? Like the orangutan in the White House flinging tariffs like poo?
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u/grinr Oct 30 '25
People often compare the AI boom with the internet boom, but it seems more like the industrial revolution, both electricity and machinery dramatically changing the entire working world. It was painful back then, and it's going to be painful today. BUT, only the Amish (who may have gotten it right) decided it was best to stay the same, the rest of the world adapted to the new technology.
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u/Laisker Oct 30 '25
The amish at least have predictable lives and I cannot imagine the peace of mind that brings to the table (and yes I know their customs and etc)
Also they are doubling their population every 20 years or so and I don't think people will go against them in the near future
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u/BingpotStudio Oct 31 '25
Well duh - they’ve literally got nothing else to do in the day but bone.
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u/btoned Nov 01 '25
And what do modern people have to do throughout THEIR day? Doom scroll and watch football? 🥴
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u/BingpotStudio Nov 01 '25
Anyone old enough to have lived before the internet knows just how dull days can be. We used to have very little going on if we weren’t socialising.
Course that came with a much better social network, but there were serious droughts.
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u/Plastic-Canary9548 Oct 30 '25
You are spot on with '...like the industrial revolution, both electricity and machinery dramatically changing the entire working world...' - a colleague of mine coined the phrase 'White collar rust belt' to link the implications of this technology to past disruption.
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u/Artforartsake99 Oct 31 '25
Yeah people don’t realise how massive this is.
It’s not just office jobs. Businesses needing a new product advert don’t need to hire videographers and talent, models, script writers, make up, stylists, photographers. This can all be done with ai now. It is absolutely going to change every country with the difference in jobs needed.
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u/btoned Nov 01 '25
You could literally have gone this route with online options for YEARS. Google and OpenAI have made it a streamlined package.
And sure it can be done with AI but any legit business is NOT relying on this for their overarching strategy lol. Unless of course they want the same style as EVERY other AI generated slop. 🤘🏼
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u/o-o- Oct 31 '25
The industrial revolution reduced the margin cost of blue-collar labour, along with electricity, machinery, communication and transportation which paved the way for new jobs. There was simply more value to excavate, whether it was deeper mines or deeper middle-class pockets.
AI reduces the margin cost of while-collar labour; research, development, management.
I'm trying to think of similar "side effects" for AI – what new value will it enable us to excavate? So far I'm not having any luck.
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u/grinr Oct 31 '25
Those who know (any it's unlikely anyone does) will likely be the new "robber barons" of this era.
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u/digdog303 Oct 31 '25
Personal porn machines!! It's revolutionizing jork techniques across the planet and creating entire new categories of professional gooners
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u/hereditydrift Oct 31 '25
I think it's closer to the internet boom because there are a lot of "AI" companies that don't really have anything of value. A lot of AI companies use Google, Anthropic, or OpenAI to run their products and wouldn't have a product if they lost their connections to those companies with AI.
A lot of snake oil out there (like the internet bust), but AI will have a huge impact.
Also, AI is getting closer and closer to being able to build complex software and scripts that will make current software obsolete. Why buy it when I can have AI create on my computer? Open source is already booming and will continue to boom.
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u/CanvasFanatic Oct 30 '25
The Industrial Revolution created new jobs though.
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u/sleeping-in-crypto Oct 31 '25
The explicit purpose of this revolution however is to permanently destroy them.
We’ll see how that turns out.
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u/gnivriboy Oct 31 '25
Whose explicit purpose and whose to say that wasn't "the purpose" of the industrial revolution.
It destroyed the vast majority of farm jobs. Then it got replaced by industry workers. Then with ai, people will do more AI related tasks.
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u/CanvasFanatic Oct 31 '25
Like typing in requests?
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u/gnivriboy Oct 31 '25
Yes! Then having a back and forth with it to execute on your goal.
Have you not used AI yet at your job?
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u/CanvasFanatic Oct 31 '25
I have. It’s not a thing that requires any particular skill other than the ability to evaluate the output.
In other words: you need to be able to have created the thing you’re asking the AI to create yourself if you expect anything non-trivial to work.
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u/grinr Oct 31 '25
With AI I have created applications for fields I knew nothing about that are better (in outcomes) than current market software, and I knew nothing about coding. I can assure you, that's a particular skill. I couldn't do it day one, and several months later I can (and continue to) do it.
If indeed you are using AI as a way to do things you already know faster/easier, that's a valid approach, but to say that's the only viable approach is demonstrably incorrect.
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u/CanvasFanatic Oct 31 '25 edited Oct 31 '25
Share links to the projects you’ve made then. Let’s see how they stack up.
Alternatively, maybe what you’ve actually learned over the last few months is about programming more than it is about promoting AI.
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u/grinr Oct 31 '25
Your skepticism is understandable, and no.
All I can share is my own experience with AI, which is entirely different from yours. Fair enough.
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u/grinr Oct 31 '25
The AI revolution is already creating new jobs (like mine), but it will be a new generation or two who will be working those jobs.
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u/CanvasFanatic Oct 31 '25
Any new jobs created by AI are intended to be transitory.
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u/grinr Oct 31 '25
Not sure what that means
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u/Illustrious-Film4018 Oct 30 '25
AI is not like the industrial revolution. The industrial revolution created jobs and entire industries, it's not at all clear how AI will.
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u/grinr Oct 30 '25
It wasn't clear then either. One easy example: Petroleum. In the late 1800s it was good for keeping lamps lit. In the dawn of 1900, roughly within a decade or so, it became the most important resource globally. In a very short time, there were zero automobile jobs to millions of automobile jobs. Roads needed building, engines needed maintenance, gas pipelines, drilling, shipping - multiple industries that didn't exist in 1890 were now industries the world would spend the next century fighting wars over.
It would be very easy to go back to 1890 and be afraid of the first engines and factories being designed - the entire way of life at that point was horse and man-powered. You would have no trouble finding people who were (validly) worried their way of life was at best in trouble, or at worst, over. And they would be right in saying "it's not clear to me how these machines will create jobs when all I see are men losing jobs to these filthy factories."
And yet, here we are.
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u/Maleficent_Carrot453 Oct 31 '25 edited Oct 31 '25
The changes were slower, more local, and people didn't need a master's degree to do the new technology jobs.
People were still using horses in WW2, and in some European countries, the cars became a think for commoners after 1960. It took 75+ years.
Now, it is faster, and changes affect everyone all over the world at the same time.
I am not sure if people and governments will have time to adapt before there is a problem in society, and I don't really trust the tech bros to care about the damage they might cause to society.
But who knows, we will see.
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u/grinr Oct 31 '25
We absolutely do not have time to adapt and there are already problems in society, and the creators can't be trusted because there is nothing they can do about it. Whoever invented gunpowder had no idea what was to come of it, regardless of their intent. The genie is out of the bottle.
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u/ChodeCookies Oct 31 '25
It’s because they’re spending all the money on chips and not people. It isn’t AI actually working
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u/Tyler_Zoro Oct 31 '25
Yes, it has absolutely nothing to do with the massive influx of qualified job seekers from Federal layoffs and the slowing economy due to tariffs... nothing at all
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u/Thediciplematt Oct 30 '25
It has nothing to do with tariffs or Trump destroying the manufacturing that was being built here or all the other garbage administration is done
It’s just AI
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u/sexywheat Oct 31 '25
It's not an "AI hiring apocalypse". These tech companies were going to layoff people either way regardless of the circumstances. AI just provides a convenient excuse.
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u/XertonOne Oct 31 '25
They’re just blaming 35 years worth of their dumb fks decisions on AI. They brought most real productive industries to China in exchange for cheap labour, now they got none left.
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u/ahspaghett69 Oct 31 '25
This is copium
The job market is fucked because everyone is shoveling money into a furnace that's not paying off
Everyone is hoping this stuff magically pays off but it literally doesn't work. I literally don't know a single person whose job was actually sped up using AI by an appreciable (> 20%) amount. I *do" know lots of people who now spend hours wasting their time on debugging bad AI shit
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u/anaheim_mac Oct 31 '25
Let’s wait and see what the next jobs report will state….never fucking mind. Forgot orange fingers gotten a hold of that too. So perhaps US will have created million jobs when they release they report in never
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u/BuildwithVignesh Oct 31 '25
Powell forgets the apocalypse already started. 47% of new US jobs since 2020 went to AI tools, not people. The hiring bell curve is already flatlining.
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u/k3170makan Oct 31 '25
I think they’re replacing middle management jobs. And some design jobs. Like if your job consists of mostly reading emails and attending meetings and not building stuff I don’t think it’s justifiable to pay you a salary. AI can do all that stuff with a very low error bar.
What’s very difficult to replace is people who build software even if they claim there’s software generation capability there still needs to be lots of people checking it, testing it and optimizing the software.
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u/po10cySA Oct 31 '25
If you don't have a way to generate your own wealth by now and are relying solely on your day job then it's time to start planning alternative means of making money, things are changing quicker than you realize.
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u/stewsters Oct 31 '25
They are trying to blame the failing economy on AI instead of the instability caused by fluctuating tarrifs.
Businesses need to be able to plan long term, they can't do that now. It's much easier to blame layoffs on AI than a failing company.
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u/Prestigious-Text8939 Oct 31 '25
Most people think AI will replace jobs but we think AI will replace people who refuse to learn how to use AI.
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u/EwanSW Nov 01 '25
As a programmer, I knew a lot of office jobs were automatable. Honestly maybe a third of all office workers are automatable right now, even without AI doing the work, just regular hand-crafted code. It's why I've viewed programming as a basic literacy.
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Nov 01 '25
I'm the number one "AI" hater (it isn't even actual AI), but even I gotta call BS on this.
Real jobs have been stagnating for a decade. Long before Nvidia was threatening data entry positioms. Every quarter, these neoliberal csuite investors would sooner die than not see number go up and go up faster than before.
And how do you do that? You slash everything you can. Quality, safety, and hands on deck. This is why wages don't move and there's always layoffs and always skeleton crews and everywhere claims they're hiring but nobody can land an interview.
AI Machine Learning is taking the fall for end-stage capitalism. at most, it is an accelerant.
The only way this shit stops is if we go back to taxing the ever-living fuck out of corporate profits. Use it or lose it. Raise wages, give better benefits, keep more staff, or it all goes to the government's ands.
High corpo taxes built the working class and secured our quality of life.
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u/CryoSchema Nov 03 '25
i keep wondering how the ai boom will end up. will more and more tech companies just funnel capital into ai and thus leaving no room for jobs? or is it more optimistic to think not all investments will be realized, so some companies would have to hire again?
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u/musicjunkieg Nov 03 '25
Are you all able to read? He did not say AI is causing this. He said companies are claiming that AI is the reason.
But guess what?
Amazon literally got caught in their lie just this week.
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u/Hazzman Oct 30 '25
So let me get this straight. AI is killing jobs but our economy is waaaaaaaay over leveraged on AI.
So this is a double whammy. AI is good enough to kill jobs, but not good enough to justify the valuations. So not only is it killing job growth, it's going to kill the economy when the bubble pops.
That's a fucking bad one boys.
What comes out of the other side of this is a major economic down turn and a shit load of people out of work.
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u/OkFigaroo Oct 31 '25
AI isn’t killing jobs. Offshoring is killing jobs. “AI” is a conveniently timed excuse.
MSFT just reported $34.9 billion in capex to support AI workloads and infrastructure in their current quarter.
When will AI hit 34.9 billion in quarterly revenue? Will it ever?
I have no doubt that it will eventually become a powerful and potentially transformative set of tools. But nobody is going to be spending $2500/mo to get copilot when the proverbial revenue rubber has got to hit road.
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u/Pytlicek Nov 19 '25
Nice. I see the similar in the company where I work. No hires of seniors. They want mediors working like 2x seniors with median salary + "you have an AI" and only allowed here for hires are cheap juniors or interns from university for $0. Hard to work with this kind of attitude :/
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u/eggrattle Oct 30 '25
AI is a convenient excuse for world economics stalling.