Meta and Microsoft have joined the tech layoff tsunami – but is AI really to blame?
Meta and Microsoft have joined the tech layoff tsunami – but is AI really to blame?
Publish Date: 2026-04-24 04:33:00
Source Domain: theconversation.com
Meta and Microsoft are the latest software companies to announce big cuts to their global workforce. Both companies are also making big investments in artificial intelligence (AI).
The link seems obvious. Meta’s chief people officer, Janelle Gale, said the job cuts – about 10% of staff or almost 8,000 workers – serve to “offset the other investments we’re making”. Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg has previously spoken about a “major AI acceleration” with spending in excess of US$115bn planned this year.
Microsoft is also betting big on AI. The company also just announced early retirement packages for about 7% of its US workforce.
The two tech giants join Atlassian, Block, WiseTech Global and Oracle, who have all made similar announcements this year, each evoking AI without outright blaming it.
What is happening here? How we understand these layoffs depends on what we think AI is, and what implications it will have. Broadly speaking, there are three ways of looking at it: that AI is superintelligence, that it’s mostly hype, and that it’s a useful tool.
The end of white-collar work?
In the first view, AI is emerging superintelligence. It is a new kind of mind, that learns, reasons, and will soon outperform humans at most cognitive tasks (hint: it’s not!).
The job losses are not just a corporate restructuring. They are an early tremor of something seismic.
In February 2026, AI entrepreneur Matt Shumer put this view vividly – comparing the current moment to the strange, quiet weeks before COVID-19 broke into global consciousness. Most people, he argued, haven’t yet realised we are facing an “intelligence explosion”.
The essay drew significant criticism. Commentators noted it contained little hard data and read at times like a pitch for Shumer’s company’s own AI products.
But it captured a genuine anxiety. Something real is happening in software engineering, at least, where tasks are well-defined and success is easy to…
