heyOver the past year, American corporate leaders have often explained layoffs by saying that the positions are no longer needed because artificial intelligence has made their companies more efficient, with computers replacing humans.
But some economists and technology analysts have expressed skepticism about such justification and instead think such workforce reductions are driven by factors such as the impact of tariffs, overhiring during the Covid-19 pandemic and perhaps maximizing profits.
In short, the CEO is allegedly engaged in “AI-washing.”
“You could say, ‘We’re integrating the latest technology into our business processes, so we’re at the cutting edge technologically, and we have to let these guys go,'” said Fabian Stefani, a departmental research lecturer at the Oxford Internet Institute.
AI was cited as a reason for more than 54,000 layoffs in 2025, according to a December report from the consulting firm. Challenger, Gray and Christmas.
Amazon alone laid off 16,000 employees in January, after cutting 14,000 in October.
Beth Galetti, senior vice president of people experience and technology at Amazon, said: 1 October Memorandum They were laying off employees because “AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the Internet, and it’s enabling companies to innovate faster than ever before.
“We are convinced that we need to be more organized,” Galetti said.
Hewlett-Packard CEO Enrique Lores also said in a november earnings call The company will use AI to “improve customer satisfaction and increase productivity”, meaning the company could cut up to 6,000 people in the “next years”.
In April, Louis von Ahn, CEO of language-learning app company Duolingo, said, announced it Enterprises will “gradually stop using contractors to perform tasks that AI can handle”.
But according to him the reason for such layoffs is often financial. 1 January report From market research firm Forrester. The company estimates that only 6% of American jobs will be automated by 2030.
Companies can use AI to replace people working in call centers and technical writing, but they don’t yet have apps that can replace most businesses and probably won’t soon, said J.P. Gounder, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester.
“A lot of companies are making a big mistake because their CEOs, who don’t know very deeply about AI, are saying, ‘Okay, let’s go ahead and lay off 20 to 30% of our workforce and we’ll fill them with AI,'” Gunder said. “If you don’t have a mature, deployed-AI application ready to do the job… it could take you 18 to 24 months to replace that person with AI – if it even works.”
But there are benefits to blaming AI for layoffs, even if that’s not the case.
For example, the Challenger report noted that tariffs were cited as the reason for fewer than 8,000 layoffs, a fraction of the number attributed to AI.
“Most economists would tell you it was impossible,” said Martha Gimbel, executive director and co-founder of the Budget Lab at Yale University. “ChatGPT was only released three years ago… It’s not like a new technology is developed and the workforce immediately adjusts. It doesn’t work like that.”
After a news report said Amazon planned to demonstrate how much Donald Trump’s tariffs would increase product pricing, the White House called it a “hostile and political act.”
An Amazon spokesperson then said, “This was never and is never going to be approved.”
“You’ve seen a real hesitation in some parts of corporate America to say anything negative about the economic impacts of the Trump administration because they think there will be consequences,” Gimbel said. “By saying that layoffs are due to new efficiencies created by AI, you avoid that potential pushback.”
CEOs may also blame layoffs on AI advancements, when in fact they are overloaded during The pandemic, Gounder said.
“It was driven by low interest rates. It was driven by the talent wars. It was driven by certain dynamics that don’t exist anymore,” he said.
Still, there are instances where CEOs have linked layoffs to AI, where it is more likely to be a legitimate reason, economists said.
For example, Marc Benioff, CEO of cloud-based software company Salesforce, said during an interview on the podcast logan bartlett show He reduced his customer staff from 9,000 to 5,000 because he now uses AI agents.
“I want less head,” he said.
Stephanie said it was commendable.
“The work described – particularly online and customer support – is relatively close to what current AI systems can perform, in terms of the tasks and skills required,” Stephanie said.
But that doesn’t mean the public should accept Benioff’s claims, the AI researchers said.
“I think CEO statements are probably the worst way to gauge how technological change is affecting the labor market,” Gimbel said. “It doesn’t mean the CEOs are lying…it just means there is an incentive effect in what is covered.”
Shortly after Amazon’s vice president linked the October layoffs to AI, the CEO, Andy Jassy, backtracked.
He said they were “not really economically driven, and it’s not really AI-driven, not yet. It’s really culture.”
And months later Duolingo’s CEO said the company would be “AI first” and would only increase its headcount “if a team can’t automate more of their work”, he reported. new York Times The company had never laid off full-time employees, nor did it plan to.
“Since the beginning, we have had contractors that we use for temporary work, and our contractor strength has gone up and down depending on needs,” he said.
An employee fired by Amazon in October described himself as a “heavy user of AI.”
“There were some tools that I created specifically for my team’s use, as well as for the use of some of our customer teams,” said the former key programs manager, whose last day at Amazon was in January and who asked not to be identified to protect his privacy because he has not yet received severance pay.
She doesn’t think AI was the reason she was fired, but “it may have helped shift some of the work to a more junior person”.
When an employee told her, “Get me up to speed on that thing you were working on. We’re going to turn it over to one of these new guys,” it became clear that “the work was not going to stop, but they were going to get someone who was paid very little for that work”, she said.
She added: “I was laid off to save manpower costs.”
