One Hundred Thousand Cuts
Tech layoffs hit a two-year high as over 100,000 workers lose their jobs, all in the name of AI. The excuse is as hollow as ever.
Here is a number that should make you check your payslip twice: 100,000. That's the number of job cuts announced by US tech companies in May 2026, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the highest monthly total in two years. And what, pray, is the explanation given by the CEOs doing the cutting? Artificial intelligence. Again.
Now we have nearly three times that number, and the script hasn't changed a syllable. Companies are "restructuring around AI," which is management-speak for firing humans and hoping nobody notices that the promised AI productivity gains have yet to materialise. The Times Now article dutifully reports that AI is the primary driver, as if reciting a press release is the same as journalism.
Let us be clear: AI is not causing these layoffs. Greed and cowardice are. AI is a convenient cudgel for executives who want to slash payrolls without taking the blame. They can say, "It's not my fault — the machines are coming," and the business press nods along. But if AI were truly that good, why are we still seeing mass layoffs at companies like Meta, where internal memos from CTO Andrew Bosworth admit morale is at rock bottom and Mark Zuckerberg has sheepishly conceded "mistakes" in the workforce shift? These are not confessions of technological inevitability; they are admissions of poor planning and expedient cruelty.
The real story is not the layoffs themselves but the ideological cover they provide. The AI industry has spent years promising a future of abundance and leisure, yet every quarter the stock buybacks increase and the headcount shrinks. The joke is on the workers, but also on the believers who thought AI would free us. Instead, it is being used to free the C-suite from the inconvenience of employees.
Consider the contrast: Jensen Huang of Nvidia — the man whose chips are supposedly powering the revolution — said this week that society needs "new social norms" for the age of AI, citing national security. This from the CEO of a company valued at trillions while its customers use his hardware to justify mass firings. The disconnect between the boardroom rhetoric and the factory-floor reality is so vast it might as well be a Grand Canyon of hypocrisy.
The AI excuse is not just tired; it is dangerous. Every time a CEO blames AI for layoffs, they reinforce the idea that technological progress inevitably displaces workers, which is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The evidence to the contrary — studies showing that AI adoption often creates new roles, that productivity gains take years to materialise — is ignored because it is inconvenient. The narrative is too useful to abandon.
So here we are: 100,000 cuts and counting. The industry will keep talking about safety and norms and governance, but none of that matters when the most immediate impact of AI is a pink slip. The next time a tech CEO tells you that AI will augment rather than replace, ask them about the 100,000. They will not have an answer that does not involve more buzzwords.
And if you are a worker in tech, do not be fooled. The AI is not coming for your job — the boss is, and he is just using AI as the excuse.