Overview
- Major employers are restructuring: Amazon confirmed 14,000 corporate cuts with leadership offering conflicting signals on AI’s role, YouTube announced an AI-focused product reorg with a voluntary exit program, and Paramount Skydance initiated job reductions tied to shifting priorities.
- A Great Place to Work India report finds 49% of millennials fear AI could replace their jobs within three to five years, and 67% of employees say their organizations are at intermediate or advanced stages of AI adoption.
- Mixed indicators persist: a Yale Budget Lab analysis reports no clear labor-market disruption since ChatGPT’s release, Goldman Sachs estimates 6%–7% potential U.S. job displacement if AI is widely adopted, and Fed Chair Jerome Powell says policymakers are monitoring AI-linked layoffs.
- A short-term market for human-in-the-loop work is expanding, with Uber offering drivers paid microtasks, startup Mercor paying professionals to train models, and reports that OpenAI is tapping musicians and ex-bankers to teach AI creative and entry-level finance tasks.
- Rollout missteps are prompting caution: the Commonwealth Bank of Australia reversed AI-linked customer service layoffs after union pressure, Taco Bell is rethinking voice AI after customer complaints, and a new experiment cited by AEI found leading models completed only about 2.5% of real freelance-style projects to client standards.