AI Is The Main Driver Behind Layoffs—For The Second Month In A Row

For the second month running, AI has been officially declared Public Enemy Number One for jobs. CEOs at Coinbase, Meta, and Oracle have all cited artificial intelligence as the reason for laying off thousands of workers, apparently with a straight face. It's a beautiful narrative: the technology that's supposed to save humanity is instead streamlining headcount. The consistency is almost admirable — you can set your watch by the quarterly bloodletting, now with a fresh coat of "AI transformation" paint.

Some experts, predictably, are ruining the fun by pointing out that companies might be fibbing. According to the same report, a number of economists suggest that many of these layoffs would have happened anyway, and AI is just a convenient cover. For instance, Coinbase's recent layoffs coincide with crypto winter, not exactly a chatbot uprising. Oracle's cuts come as it restructures cloud operations. And Meta's ongoing purge seems more about appeasing shareholders than replacing humans with machines. But why let reality spoil a good narrative? When you can say "AI made me do it," why bother with honesty?

The real risk here isn't job losses — it's the normalization of blaming technology for management decisions. If every layoff is attributed to AI, regulators will struggle to distinguish between actual automation-related displacement and simple cost-cutting. The term "AI-driven layoff" becomes meaningless, and the genuine harms get buried. Meanwhile, the churn continues, and chief executives get to look forward-looking while slashing payrolls. So here's to another month of AI taking the blame — long may the scapegoat serve.