A company lays off 500 employees, says AI 'is reshaping every industry'

In a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said AI helps speed up the process of moving from idea to product, simplifies product introduction to market, improves customer experience and drives efficiency across departments. According to him, AI helps strengthen the workforce within the business.

“We are operating at a market and technology ‘inflection point,’ with AI reshaping every industry, increasing risks, and changing customer needs,” CrowdStrike CEO wrote in the report. An inflection point is a point at which an event or paradigm shift occurs that significantly impacts an organization’s operations.

CrowdStrike plans to lay off 500 people, or 5% of its workforce, before the end of the second quarter at a cost of between $36 million and $53 million. The company currently employs nearly 10,000 people.

Over the past month, leaders of technology companies such as Box, Duolingo, and Shopify have all mentioned the role of AI in the company and directed employees to increase the use of AI tools. The language learning app Duolingo will replace contract workers with AI and become an “AI-first” company. As if to affirm the superiority of technology, Duolingo is preparing to introduce 148 new foreign language courses created by AI.

“It took us about 12 years to develop the first 100 courses, and now in a year we can create and launch almost 150 new courses,” said Duolingo co-founder and CEO Luis von Ahn, who previously said the company would only hire new staff once it could no longer automate more tasks.

“AI not only drives performance, but also helps us achieve our mission,” von Ahn asserted. “Without AI, it would take decades to scale content to more learners.”

However, Duolingo's decision has left users dissatisfied, especially when people lose their jobs to AI. Some argue that using AI has made the app worse because of poor quality and inaccurate content.

From the story of AI replacing human labor, journalist Brian Merchant sees this as a sign that the job crisis caused by AI has appeared. A former Duolingo contract employee revealed that in both rounds of staff cuts in late 2023 and October 2024, positions from translators to authors were replaced by AI.

Merchant points to the unusually high unemployment rate among college graduates in the US. This could be because businesses are using AI to do basic office work, or because spending on AI “crowds out” spending on recruiting new staff.

While CrowdStrike blamed the layoffs on AI, others like Autodesk and HP cited market and economic instability. That was before US President Donald Trump announced tariffs on almost the entire world.

(According to CNBC, TechCrunch)

'We must prepare our children for the era of artificial intelligence' On May 5, more than 250 US CEOs signed an open letter calling for artificial intelligence (AI) and computer science to be made compulsory subjects in all schools.

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