Meta began laying off thousands of workers on Wednesday with an eye toward axing 10% of its staff to offset AI costs. The company also said it would move another 7,000 workers into AI-focused roles. Meta’s technology chief Andrew Bosworth described “the vision we are building towards is one where our agents primarily do the work,” in a post cited by The Wall Street Journal.
The market may respond positively when tech companies cite AI for layoffs — Meta’s shares have gone up virtually every time it’s announced job cuts — but the AI pile-on is one of the many reasons that former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and others are getting booed at commencement speeches when mentioning AI. And it’s already becoming a political issue as midterms approach.
After our story last week on how the age of AI has impacted the Class of 2026, students around the country reached out to share their own struggles. One 27-year-old master’s student told me it validated her decision to pause her data analytics program and work at her dad’s accounting firm — a stable job with health insurance. The Class of 2026 article was “depressing af,” she said. “But it was also weirdly comforting” in confirming she made the right decision.