The wave of layoffs at large corporations is not necessarily due to AI.

Thousands of workers are falling victim to job cuts at Amazon, UPS, Nestlé and other major companies, amid economic turmoil, the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and global tensions.

In a recent message to employees, Amazon said it would cut about 14,000 office positions.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy asserted that the layoffs "are not really about financial reasons, and they're not really about AI, at least not right now."

Mr. Jassy explained that the problem lay in the corporate culture. He believed that the company had become too big and complex after years of rapid growth. He said Amazon had hired too many people and created too many unnecessary layers of management.

Speaking to Yahoo Finance, Timothy DeStefano, an economics professor at Georgetown University, said Amazon had been hiring aggressively between 2017 and 2022, adding a large number of employees during the pandemic, so he was not surprised the company made this adjustment.

Amazon isn’t the only company laying off workers. UPS said in its third-quarter earnings report that it cut about 34,000 operations positions between January and September to improve efficiency, and about 14,000 other positions, mostly at the management level.

Similarly, Target is planning to cut 1,800 office positions, while Paramount Skydance is expected to cut about 1,000 jobs. Another 1,000 Paramount employees may also be laid off, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Even companies like Meta, which are seen as the biggest beneficiaries of the AI-driven economy, have announced layoffs. What’s more, the cuts are happening within their own AI development departments. Similarly, electric vehicle maker Rivian is also said to be making cuts.

In DeStefano’s personal view, there is no connection between these layoffs and AI. He explains that while companies are investing heavily in artificial intelligence, there is no clear evidence yet that they are deploying it in a way that could displace thousands of workers. So, he sees the recent layoff announcements as a completely normal part of the business cycle.

Goldman Sachs recently released a survey of more than 100 of its experts on how corporate clients are using or planning to use AI.

The results found that only 11% of US companies are currently actively cutting staff because of AI, although the report also noted that larger-scale cuts could come in the future.

Goldman Sachs Research economists said the results support their long-held view that AI will primarily be a technology that improves productivity and revenue. At the same time, the survey also confirms recent studies that show AI’s impact on the labor market is still limited, except for a few specific areas such as technology./.

(TTXVN/Vietnam+)

Source: https://www.vietnamplus.vn/lan-song-sa-thai-nhan-vien-o-cac-tap-doan-lon-khong-han-do-ai-post1074642.vnp