The CEO of an AI company has said he thinks the leaders of other tech companies are using artificial intelligence as an “excuse” to layoff workers and that fears the new technology will lead to an employment “apocalypse” are overblown.
Key Facts
- Jason Droege, CEO of AI infrastructure company Scale AI, said CEOs are hiding behind the excuse of AI to reduce headcount and make cuts that would otherwise be thought of as ordinary “right-sizing.”
- While speaking at the Semafor World Economy conference Thursday, Droege said he thinks AI is still too unreliable to make the important moves so many humans make at work, specifically pointing to financial decisions.
- He added that he thinks employees are at risk of being fired if they don’t learn to use AI property in their jobs, but because their jobs will be fully automated and done by an artificial intelligence bot.
- Droege’s comments are similar to those made by U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Wednesday, but are largely contrarian to what has been said by other tech CEOs who’ve flaunted the ability to cut their number of human employees and do the same work with smaller teams thanks to AI.
- Billionaire Evan Spiegel on Wednesday said his company, Snap, would lay off 1,000 employees because of “rapid advancements in artificial intelligence” and last month Oracle, Meta, Crypto.com and Atlassian all put the blame for massive job cuts on the shoulders of AI.
Crucial Quote
“AI is not going to take your job. Someone who knows how to use AI is going to take your job,” Bessent said.
Big Number
30,000. That’s how many layoffs have been blamed on AI so far this year, according to career services firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. AI was cited for almost 55,000 cuts in 2025.
Key Background
CEOs have increasingly blamed AI for job cuts in the last year and warned middle management and white collar jobs are likely to be the most vulnerable in the AI renaissance. Billionaire Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff last year announced nearly 4,000 customer support staff would be cut and explained that, because of AI integration, “I need less heads.” Billionaire Jack Dorsey and former Sequoia managing partner Roelof Botha last month said they think AI can do much of what middle managers, or about 12% of the workforce, do today. Mike Cannon-Brookes, co-founder of software company Atlassian, explained his company’s cut by saying they’d allow “further investment in AI.” Andy Challenger, workplace expert and chief revenue officer at Challenger, Gray & Christmas, last month said, “Companies are shifting budgets toward AI investments at the expense of jobs.”
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