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A comment on The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam. Parent comment

Re:The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam by rsanek on Tuesday May 19, 2026 @04:18AM (#48190638)
Pandemic-related over-hiring was corrected by end of ~2023, if you look at employment growth rates pre-pandemic. [1] I'm more inclined to believe that it is AI (or, at least, the expectation by CEOs of what AI will be).

[1] https://robulka.com/employees/

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Re:The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam by disgruntledphd2 on Tuesday May 19, 2026 @07:41AM (#48192044)
> I'm more inclined to believe that it is AI

So for the Mag7 it's kinda AI, in that they want to maintain margins and invest loads more into capital for AI infrastructure. Those layoffs clearly have AI associated with them.

For lots of other tech, I'm not sure. I do believe that productivity can increase in a bunch of places with AI tooling, but you need to build that tooling first, then monitor and ensure that it continues working. Like, the vast majority of tech companies already outsourced a lot of what AI tooling would/could do, so I'm somewhat sceptical of the rationale (AI is so good we can cut 20% of our staff).

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