Companies are blaming AI for job cuts. Critics say it’s a ‘good excuse’

From tech to airlines, major global companies are cutting staff as the real-world impact of artificial intelligence is scaring employees away. But critics say AI has become an easy excuse for companies looking to downsize.

Last month, tech consultancy firm accenture announced restructuring plan This includes accelerated exits for workers who are not able to re-skill on AI in the first place. After days, lufthansa said it was going Eliminate 4,000 jobs by 2030 Since it relies on AI to increase efficiency.

sales force also removed 4,000 customer support roles In September, saying that AI could do 50% of the work in the company. Meanwhile, fintech firms Klarna has decreased staff 40% Because it aggressively adopts AI tools.

language learning platform Duolingo Said it will happen gradually stop trusting contractors And use AI to fill the gaps.

The headlines are sobering, but Fabian Stefani, an assistant professor of AI who works at the Oxford Internet Institute, said there could be more to the story than just job cuts.

There may have been some stigma attached to the use of AI in the past, but now companies are using the technology as a “scapegoat” for challenging business moves like layoffs.

“I’m really skeptical that the layoffs we’re currently seeing are actually due to real efficiency gains. It’s really a projection into AI in the sense of ‘we can use AI to make good excuses,'” Stefani said in an interview with CNBC.

Companies may essentially position themselves at the frontier of AI technology in order to appear innovative and competitive, while at the same time hiding the real reasons for layoffs., According to Stephanie.

“There could be many other reasons why companies are having to get rid of a portion of their workforce… Duolingo or Klarna are actually prime candidates for this because overhiring has also happened during the Corona (COVID-19 pandemic),” the professor said.

Some companies that thrived during the pandemic were “significantly overhired” and recent layoffs may simply be “market validation.”

“It’s somewhat dismissive of people who didn’t have a sustainable long-term perspective,” he said, and instead of saying “we miscalculated this two, three years ago, they can now become scapegoats, and they’re saying ‘though it’s because of AI.'”

This pattern has promoted online conversation. One founder, Jean-Christophe Bugle, even said in a popular linkedin post Adoption of AI is “much slower” than claimed and “not much is happening” in large corporations and AI projects are even being withdrawn due to cost or security concerns.

“At the same time there are announcements of huge layoff plans ‘because of AI.’” Bugle, co-founder of Authentic.ly, said. “This seems like a big excuse, in a context where economies are slowing in many countries despite the incredible performance of stock exchanges.”

“We have successfully deployed hundreds of employees into other areas such as professional services, sales and customer success,” a Salesforce spokesperson said.

Klarna tells CNBC its co-founder and CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski Comments on X Where he pointed out that the company has reduced its workforce from 5,500 to 3,000 in two years, but “AI is only part of that story.”

Siemiatkowski linked the reduction in workforce to the reduction of its analytics team to a “success team”, many of whom left due to natural attrition, as well as a reduction in the company’s customer success team.

Lufthansa and Accenture It declined to comment on the matter and did not share any further details on its AI restructuring strategy. Duolingo did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

The Budget Lab, a non-partisan policy research center at Yale University, issued a report on Wednesday which revealed that American labor has actually been slightly disrupted by AI automation since the release of ChatGPT in 2022.

The lab examined US labor market data from November 2022 to July 2025 using an “inequality index,” which measured how much the occupational mix – the share of workers in different jobs – has changed since the introduction of AI and compared it to other technological changes such as the introduction of computers and the internet. It found that AI has not yet caused large-scale job loss.

Additionally, New York Fed economists released Research The study found in early September that AI use among companies “does not point to a significant reduction in employment” in the services and manufacturing industries in the New York-Northern New Jersey region.

It found that 40% of service firms said they were using AI this year, up from 25% last year, while manufacturing companies saw a similar jump from 16% last year to 26% this year, but very few were using AI to lay off employees.

Only 1% of service firms cited AI as a reason for laying off employees in the past six months, while 10% reported laying off employees using AI in 2024. Meanwhile, 12% of service companies said AI would force them to hire fewer employees in 2025.

In contrast, 35% of service firms have used AI to retrain employees and 11% have hired more people as a result.

Stephanie said her research found no evidence that AI would cause mass technological unemployment.

“Economists call it structural unemployment, so the share of work is no longer enough for everyone and so while people will definitely lose jobs because of AI, I don’t think that’s happening on a large scale,” he said.

He said concerns about technology eliminating human work can be seen throughout history.

“It’s been repeated a dozen times in this century alone, you can go back to ancient times where Roman emperors banned certain machines because they were worried about it and the opposite always happened. Machines made companies, industries more productive.

“It allowed the emergence of entirely new jobs. If you think about the Internet 20 years ago, no one would know what a social media influencer is, what an app developer is because it didn’t exist.”

Read more about companies making AI layoffs below: