A small but growing number of tech firms have cited AI as a reason for laying off workers and rethinking new hires in recent months, as Silicon Valley races to adapt to rapid advances in the technology being developed in its own backyard.
And in late April, file-storage service Dropbox said that it was cutting about 16% of its workforce, or about 500 people, also citing AI. “Over the last few months, AI has captured the world’s collective imagination, expanding the potential market for our next generation of AI-powered products more rapidly than any of us could have anticipated,” Dropbox CEO Drew Houston wrote in a note to staff announcing the job cuts. “Our next stage of growth requires a different mix of skill sets, particularly in AI and early-stage product development.
“AI, as far as I see it, doesn’t necessarily replace humans, but rather enhances the work of humans,” Wang said. “I think that the kind of competition that we all should be thinking more about is that human specialists will be replaced by human specialists who can take advantage of AI tools.”The AI-driven tech layoffs come amid broader cuts in the industry.
In January, just days after Microsoft announced plans to lay off 10,000 employees as part of broader cost-cutting measures, the company also confirmed it was making a “multibillion dollar” investment into OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. And in March, in the same letter to staff Mark Zuckerberg used to announce plans to lay off another 10,000 workers , the Meta CEO also outlined plans for investing heavily in AI.
Lee told CNN that a recent analysis of data from Comprehensive.io shows the average salary for a senior software engineer specializing in artificial intelligence or machine learning is 12% higher than for those who don’t specialize in that area, a data point he dubs “the AI premium.