Stanford HAI’s 2026 AI Index found employment for software developers aged 22–25 fell nearly 20% since 2024, while employment for developers aged 30 and over continued growing. The entry-level ladder is being pulled up, not the whole building.
I’m not sure if this is meant to be a refutation, so apologies if I misinterpreted. But cut jobs to buy hardware sounds to me like jobs lost due to AI, no?
AI isn’t replacing those jobs. Those jobs were lost to fund speculation. AI isn’t doing their jobs, their former coworkers are doing more work. It’s an important distinction. Those salaries are funding things that don’t exist yet, so the workers couldn’t have been replaced by them.
It feels like a distinction no one is strictly trying to make in this thread, to me. The OP picture says AI has made us unemployed. Commenter at top of chain says it has, and provided a source to show job loss due to AI.
I mean, I just don’t think the people who have lost their jobs due to AI care much if it was because the AI directly replaced them or just made their former coworker more efficient.
It matters very much whenever discussing AI, as to whether AI is actually performing the jobs of workers who lost their jobs. There’s a very powerful marketing machine at work which is partially responsible for convincing businesses to make these speculative moves. Speculation and a bubble are killing jobs. “AI” is by and large is not replacing workers.
it has
Only in the sense that it’s being used as a scapegoat for layoffs
oh 100% - but also:
https://axis-intelligence.com/ai-job-displacement-statistics/
Hasn’t this been happening for longer than that? Nobody wants to hire juniors if you can just poach them when they know how to do things
they are in for a surprise in 5-8 years, when they find these 30 yo ones don’t grow on trees…
https://worldmetrics.org/ai-job-loss-statistics/
Most jobs lost to AI were not replaced by AI but cut so they could use their salaries to pay for more hardware.
I’m not sure if this is meant to be a refutation, so apologies if I misinterpreted. But cut jobs to buy hardware sounds to me like jobs lost due to AI, no?
AI isn’t replacing those jobs. Those jobs were lost to fund speculation. AI isn’t doing their jobs, their former coworkers are doing more work. It’s an important distinction. Those salaries are funding things that don’t exist yet, so the workers couldn’t have been replaced by them.
It feels like a distinction no one is strictly trying to make in this thread, to me. The OP picture says AI has made us unemployed. Commenter at top of chain says it has, and provided a source to show job loss due to AI.
I mean, I just don’t think the people who have lost their jobs due to AI care much if it was because the AI directly replaced them or just made their former coworker more efficient.
It matters very much whenever discussing AI, as to whether AI is actually performing the jobs of workers who lost their jobs. There’s a very powerful marketing machine at work which is partially responsible for convincing businesses to make these speculative moves. Speculation and a bubble are killing jobs. “AI” is by and large is not replacing workers.
is that a feeling or backed by data? losses are largely due to automation