While there are various reasons for firing employees, there is a growing argument that blames AI or makes excuses for convenience.
What you should know
In recent years, the world's largest companies, banks and financial institutions, and technology leaders have been continuously laying off large numbers of employees. Most employers have been saying that they no longer need as many human resources as artificial intelligence (AI) has automated the work that employees used to do.
However, despite the various reasons for laying off employees, the argument that they are doing so by blaming AI for convenience or under the pretext of AI is now being heard. This has been termed ‘AI-washing’ by the technology community.
Speaking to CNBC-TV18 at the recent AI conference in India, Sam Altman, head of ChatGPT maker OpenAI, suggested that companies are unfairly blaming AI technology for laying off employees. ‘I can’t say exactly what percentage, but a significant number of people are engaging in AI-washing and blaming AI for layoffs,’ he said. ‘Even if AI didn’t exist, they would have laid off employees. Some jobs have been displaced by AI.’
Fortune.com journalist Sasa Roselberg has analyzed that there is truth to Altman’s outspokenness. According to journalist Roselberg, there is a tendency for companies to blame AI to hide the real reason for their layoffs. He argues that tech company founders are creating a narrative that AI is having a major impact on the labor market and the economy to justify their huge investments in AI. Fortune, citing Martha Gimbel, executive director of the Yale Budget Lab, wrote, “Companies are resorting to AI washing to hide the problems created by their business failures, declining profits and geopolitical tensions.”
Current data does not provide a clear picture of whether AI is taking away people’s jobs. This has led to a surge in the discussion of AI washing. In a survey of thousands of C-suites (company executives) in the US, UK, Germany and Australia, 90 percent said that AI had no impact on workplace employment in the three years since ChatGPT was launched. However, according to the World Economic Forum’s ‘Future of Jobs Report 2025’, about 40 percent of employers expect to reduce their workforces due to AI in the future.
A recent article in The New York Times titled ‘Did AI Take Your Job? Or Was Your Employer AI-washing?’ states that companies are using AI as an excuse to hide their weaknesses, such as poor financial conditions or overhiring (recruiting more employees than necessary). According to the article, linking employee layoffs to AI is a ‘trick to appease investors’. The Times analyzes that this indicates that the company is adopting cutting-edge technology and is succeeding in cutting costs. It is also speculated that companies may have used AI as a safe excuse to point to the reason for the layoffs, considering it risky to criticize government policies such as tariffs.
According to data from ‘Challenger, Gray & Christmas’, an American company that helps laid-off employees find new jobs, AI was cited as the reason for more than 50,000 employee layoffs in 2025. According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which publishes a monthly ‘job cuts report’, Amazon, the world’s largest e-commerce platform, recently announced that it will cut 16,000 corporate jobs. The company had also cut 14,000 jobs. Pinterest has said that it will reduce its workforce by about 15 percent, increasing its investment in AI. The head of HP has said that up to 6,000 jobs could be cut due to AI in the coming years. According to
Layoffs.FY, tech companies around the world have laid off more than 700,000 employees since 2022. Peter Capelli, a professor at the Wharton School, doubts that job losses are due to AI. He told The New York Times, “Companies are saying that we are adopting AI, so they are saying that jobs may be lost. They are not saying that it has already happened. So there is little reason to believe that AI is the cause of the cuts that are happening now.”
According to Gimbel, executive director of the Yale Budget Lab, current data does not show any major ‘macroeconomic’ impact on the economy due to AI.
Stanford economist Erik Brynjolfsson, on the other hand, has explained AI’s initial positive impact, citing a 2.7 percent increase in productivity last year. – With the support of the agency
