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Ask HN: If AI boosts productivity so much, why would a company lay anyone off?
Say hypothetically the productivity boost from AI is 2x per employee and a company has 10,000 employees.
Wouldn't number of employees be a huge point of leverage?
Why would you do a layoff when your 10,000 employees are now equivalent to 20,000
Aren't you technically in the best possible position for growth?
- minimaxir 8mo agoThere isn't enough work to justify 10,000 employees. There are diminishing returns.
- ex-aws-dude 8mo agoIf there wasn't enough work how would they have been hired in the first place?
- OsrsNeedsf2P 8mo agoThere isn't enough work for 10,000 employees using AI.
- ex-aws-dude 8mo agoIf the company is growing why would the work just suddenly run out?
- tim-tday 8mo agoBecause laying people off makes more profit for the owners.
- reliefcrew 8mo ago> Say hypothetically the productivity boost from AI is 2x per employee I believe this is a bad assumption. Most likely the boost is not normally distributed. So, although all employees become more productive, some employees become much more productive thereby making the others redundant. As someone pointed out already... there are diminishing returns. In addition, there are marginal returns. Put the two together and you get ever diminishing marginal returns from the laggard employees.