🔙 Throwback Thursday for 2025-07-03
AI job replacement claims in 2025 from CEOs with SXSW 2024 insights from the field
One story that caught my eye this week:
https://www.techmeme.com/250703/p13#a250703p13
It’s important to remember this is the year 2025.
CEOs claiming AI will replace people in current jobs is click bait at best and sensationalizing for rage clicks at worst. Where are the results?
Surveys are plentiful in characterizing CEO confidence but the same was true of “digital transformation” before this and “big data” of years before that. Results matter.
A year ago, I attended “Life After Big Tech: Where Are Laid Off Workers Now?“ at SXSW 2024. Here are some of my notes:
- Trends leading to where we are today
- Over hiring
- Bloated and overstuffed organizations
- AI and automation rendering some amount of labor reductions
- Debates
- Layoffs as a mask for poor performance
- Instead of 20 staff with a speciality, you’ll need 2 because of AI
- If you can be Upwork’d you can be AI’d
- There are freelancers doing top 1% work getting a 16% increase in their rates and 12% more revenue from AI as their toolchain
Source:
https://fudge.org/archive/sxsw-2024-days-1-3/
