[daxfohl]

Agree, but two questions:

First, is AI really a better scapegoat? "Reducing headcount due to end of ZIRP" maybe doesn't sound great, but "replacing employees with AI" sounds a whole lot worse from a PR perspective (to me anyway).

Second, are companies actually using AI as the scapegoat? I haven't followed it too closely, but I could imagine that layoffs don't say anything about AI at all, and it's mostly media and FUD inventing the correlation.

[ledauphin]

the one does actually sound worse because... it's actually worse. it clarifies that the companies themselves were playing games with people's livelihoods because of the potential for profit.

whereas "AI" is intuitively an external force; it's much harder to assign blame to company leadership.

[daxfohl]

I'd read the first as adjusting to market demand, not playing with people's lives. If if were construed as playing with lives, that could apply to basically any investment.

[tilne]

Agreed. You could make the case that employment in general is playing with someone’s life.

[leflambeur]

isn't the scapegoat he or she who gets sacrificed? I think engineers are that