The AI Excuse

Across many sectors, companies are framing layoffs as the unavoidable result of AI. From retail to finance to entertainment, AI is becoming the explanation of choice when the real drivers are overspending, stalled growth, or a model no longer built for today’s consumers and audiences.

Based on pattern recognition, I think there is a simple reason leaders lean on this narrative. Saying “technology replaced these roles” sounds forward leaning. Saying “our decisions created a problem and now people are paying for it” raises questions many would rather avoid.

This isn’t just a financial strategy, it’s a human instinct. People are wired to seek external causes when internal accountability feels threatening.

Technology becomes the shield that lets management skip the harder conversation: admitting a plan didn’t work, a market shifted, or a complicated pivot should’ve been made sooner.

In entertainment, this pattern is showing up because the legacy system needed to adapt fast, paid big, and sold future performance based on legacy habits and metrics. As that future becomes less likely, the explanation becomes automation, not the difficult acknowledgement that the model no longer supports the scale it once did.

I don’t think most near-term cuts linked to AI will be the result of replacement by software. They’re the result of market contraction, declining revenue, and C suite survival struggles.

I hope there are teams working with AI in thoughtful ways. My process is experimentation, learning, and defining the boundaries around what I like and what I don’t.

AI isn’t the enemy. The challenge is reluctance to face uncomfortable truths, make hard pivots, and accept accountability for strategies that no longer match the world of 2025.

-- 2027? I’m in the employment apocalypse camp as espoused by Ex-Google design ethicist and AI expert Tristan Harris.

But maybe that's just because I watched Colossus: The Forbin Project when I was ten and it scared the crap out of me.