Lots of big tech companies are slimming down and cutting their workforces. This corporate trimming of the fat has become common in the tech sector over the past couple of years.
Well-known marketing professor and media impresario Scott Galloway has a theory as to what’s behind the layoffs: AI. The catch is many executives are hesitant to admit they’re laying off employees with the intent of replacing their jobs with artificial intelligence.
Galloway likens the move to the open secret many people use to lose weight themselves, calling AI “corporate Ozempic.”
“My thesis is that firms (notably tech companies) have also discovered a weight loss drug and are also being coy about it,” Galloway writes on his blog, No Mercy/No Malice. “Recent financial news features two stories: layoffs and record profits. These are related.”
A spate of tech companies have conducted layoffs in recent months. Meta, a Silicon Valley stalwart, has laid off around 20,000 employees since November 2022. Apple might be cutting hundreds of employees from its self-driving car unit after killing the project. Salesforce laid off about 700 employees at the beginning of the year after cutting more than 7,000 people in 2023. In January, across two rounds of layoffs that hit its ad sales and hardware teams, Alphabet laid off over 1,000 employees after handing out 12,000 pink slips in 2022.
All this comes, Galloway notes, as the tech industry has seen stellar business results. Some of them even delivered historic numbers: Meta announced a record $40.1 billion in revenue in the fourth quarter of 2023, while tripling net income compared with the same period the year before. The discrepancy points to a strategic shift rather than a need to rightsize an ailing company, according to Galloway.
“I believe AI is playing a larger role in layoffs than CEOs are willing to admit,” Galloway writes in the post. “CEOs are being coy about this, at least in public, because there’s a sense of fear surrounding the brave new world of AI.”
Galloway declined to comment.
So far, tech companies have not said their layoffs were the result of a transition to AI. In fact, some like IBM CEO Arvind Krishna have said the company’s investments in AI mean headcount will increase. Others, like Alphabet, which has been a juggernaut in AI with the acquisition of pioneering startup DeepMind in 2014 and the release of tools like its Bard chatbot (now called Gemini), were clear in saying AI and layoffs weren’t related.
“We’re not restructuring because AI is taking away roles—that’s important here,” Alphabet chief business officer Philipp Schindler said on an earnings call this month.
It was those denials that “first raised my antennae,” Galloway says. Extending his Ozempic analogy, he likens these corporate statements to people who say they “cut out gluten” to lose weight, instead of admitting that they’ve started taking the weight-loss drug. Ozempic makes it easier to lose weight because it essentially eliminates cravings; in business, AI can eliminate a craving Galloway believes companies would be happy to do away with.
“If consumers are willing to pay $1,000 a month to lose weight without cravings, what would a corporation pay to achieve the previously unthinkable: reducing costs while growing revenue?” Galloway writes.
That doesn’t mean all jobs will be eliminated. Galloway believes AI will also help employees augment their work, allowing for companies to do more with less. “Managers can take on new initiatives and domains without the headache of hiring more humans,” he writes.
The concept of a future workplace where AI and humans work in harmony is becoming increasingly common. One of the more accepted views now is that AI will simply replace rote, repetitive work. In that scenario, AI is likely to replace certain job functions if not entire roles. That doesn’t mean AI’s effects will be negligible: The International Monetary Fund predicts some 60% of jobs in advanced economies will be impacted by AI. Roughly half of them, though, could see productivity go up. Another estimate from Goldman Sachs says two-thirds of jobs, and up to one-fourth of current work, could be affected.
All that new focus on AI does mean the few people with expertise in the field will be in high demand. Companies will be eager to hire these people, and many of the tech companies already have, but the trend is starting to proliferate in other sectors across corporate America.
Galloway predicts over the next year, executives will be open about the fact they’re replacing people with AI as its usage in the workplace becomes more common. When that does happen, “pundits will clutch their pearls for a hot minute until the stock explodes, and the secret hiding in plain sight will be visible to everyone: [AI is] corporate Ozempic. It’s not about less bread, but less craving for bread. Read: hiring people,” Galloway writes.