The canary in the coal mine.
From Observer, July 8:
Executives say A.I. isn’t just doing the work—it’s reshaping who gets hired, retained or replaced.
Tech layoffs are nothing new in Silicon Valley, a region long shaped by boom-and-bust hiring cycles, speculative investment and shifting economic conditions. But in recent months, executives have offered a different explanation for job cuts: the rapid rise of A.I. So far in 2025, nearly 400 tech companies have announced layoffs, affecting close to 94,000 employees, according to TrueUp’s tech layoff tracker. Many of these roles are expected to be replaced—directly or indirectly—by A.I.-driven efficiencies.
Salesforce, for example, cut 1,000 roles earlier this year, redirecting hiring toward sales roles focused on A.I.-powered products. CEO Marc Benioff said last month that A.I. currently handles 30 to 50 percent of the company’s work, reducing the need for roles in fields like software engineering and customer support. Despite the job cuts, Salesforce remains financially strong, reporting $9.8 billion in revenue for the February-April quarter, an 8 percent year-over-year increase.
Microsoft, the world’s second largest company by market capitalization, has also made significant cuts in 2025. The company laid off around 9,000 employees in July, following a separate round of more than 6,000 in May. Software engineers have borne the brunt of these reductions.
Though Microsoft has not explicitly linked the layoffs to A.I., the technology’s growing role inside the company is undeniable. In April, CEO Satya Nadella disclosed that A.I. now writes about 30 percent of Microsoft’s code—a figure he expects to climb.
Microsoft isn’t alone in its internal shift toward A.I. At Google, well over 30 percent of new code includes A.I. generated suggestions, CEO Sundar Pichai revealed earlier this year. At Meta, Mark Zuckerberg has described developing an A.I. agent with coding abilities comparable to a mid-level engineer as one of the company’s top goals for 2025....
....MUCH MORE
In the short run the changes aren't really noticeable.
And in the medium term, there will be attempts to revive the canary and return to the previous equilibrium:
This device was used to resuscitate canaries in coal mines
....MUCH MORE at Manchester's Science + Industry Museum via MuseumCrush.
In the longer term, say five to ten years, we are going to experience a social problem that may be intractable and probably increasingly violent: an educated and sometimes intelligent population that is unemployable.
