Only 75 out of 287,000 layoffs this year attributed to AI replacement, yet further down, IBM alone has replaced "hundreds" of HR employees with AI. Which is it?

Absolute trash article. Any vague gesture in the direction of a fact is poorly defined with no sources. This should only increase skepticism towards AI replacing writers and journalists.

Capital Economics analysts warned that some firms use AI as cover for cuts driven by poor financial performance. “For some firms, AI is a way to spin job losses driven by poor financial performance in a more positive light,” they wrote.

The AI job apocalypse narrative serves multiple purposes: it justifies hiring freezes, explains away poor financial performance, and creates urgency around AI adoption.

I suspected as much too: that the people in-charge are using AI as a scapegoat so that the anger that would have been directed at them gets turned towards AI instead.

Given that there's a vocal minority of Lemmings who blindly hate AI, I'd say their propaganda has definitely found at least some success.

yet further down, IBM alone has replaced "hundreds" of HR employees with AI. Which is it?

The article is implying that claims like these are bogus, no?

AI is changing how work gets done, but not eliminating entire roles. At IBM, “a couple hundred” HR workers were replaced by AI agents, CEO Arvind Krishna told The Wall Street Journal in May.

While we have done a huge amount of work inside IBM on leveraging AI and automationon certain enterprise workflows, our total employment has actually gone up, because what it does is it gives you more investment to put into other areas,” Krishna said.

The company used AI savings to hire more programmers and salespeople.

so they did fire a couple hundred HR people, but claim that allowed them to hire more people in other areas. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Well, for now yes, but who knows what will happen next?

Well, let's see what happens next. Sometimes it seems to me that I live in some kind of novel, and not the most rosy one, apparently in the dystopian genre just before the main events begin lol.

Well, they can say anything, for example, I am a flying wizard on a broomstick, I answer, I don’t lie.

AI : Actually India

I'm having a thought now.

Each time we see "company laid off X employees to replace them with AI". Is it really to replace them with AI or is it just layoff because we are in recession that are disguised with AI to make it sound better ?

What kind of source is GazeOn? Based off the top menu items, looks like a pro-AI rag. Biased source.

To give them an ounce of credit, there are many factors that would prevent any sort of accurate reporting on those numbers. To take that credit away, they confidently harp on their own poorly sourced number of 75.

Whether AI is explicitly stated as the cause, or even effective at the job functions its attempting to replace is irrelevant. Businesses are plowing ahead with it and it is certainly resulting in job cuts, to say nothing of the interference its causing in the hiring process once you're unemployed.

We need to temper our fears of an AI driven world, but we also need to treat the very real and observable consequences of it as the threat that it is.

I was recently swimming in that thought soup, myself.

In reality, the truth is somewhere in between. Yes, AI is taking real jobs right now, not a speculative future, but so are the economic issues.

There are just so many people suffering. Young and old, there's not a demographic untouched by it. Plenty of blame to go around, for sure.