Author: Nancy, PANews

The louder the AI battle, the more anxious humans become.

As effective accelerationism becomes the guiding principle in Silicon Valley, AI demonstrates an astonishing pace of evolution, and the commercial wave sweeping in has heated up the discourse on unemployment. The wave of layoffs comes one after another, from Silicon Valley giants to Chinese major companies, from traditional finance to the cryptocurrency market; the panic surrounding AI seems to be continuously amplifying.

However, this wave of layoffs is more a delayed reckoning of the expansion bubble under the guise of AI.

From Wall Street giants to the crypto circle, AI presses the streamline button

The global tech industry is undergoing an unprecedented "mass slimming," and the name of AI is becoming the "legitimate" reason for this wave of layoffs.

According to statistics from the British financial research institution RationalFX, in just the first quarter of 2026, the global tech industry has already cut over 45,000 jobs, with at least 20% attributed to AI. In contrast, the percentage of layoffs due to AI in 2025 was not even 8%. This trend is still accelerating, and the total number of layoffs for the year is expected to exceed 260,000.

Wall Street was the first to press the "streamline button." Amazon, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, BlackRock, Meta... whether financial giants or tech pioneers, all have collectively initiated layoff modes.

China, also a major player in AI, has not been spared. Internet giants like Tencent, ByteDance, NetEase, Bilibili, and Baidu are also making adjustments to their team structures.

The crypto circle has similarly experienced a wave of AI layoffs, with projects like Block, Gemini, Crypto.com, and Algorand announcing scale reductions throughout the year. Among them, Block has announced a drastic layoff of 40%, citing that AI has changed the meaning of establishing and operating a company.

Panic is spreading globally. From the apocalyptic narrative of "AI replacing humans" in "The Global Intelligence Crisis 2028" to the viral "AI Job Risk Map" released by AI guru Karpathy, this unease is rapidly sweeping the globe.

It seems that as AI continues, layoffs may also persist.

The victory of Silicon Valley's "accelerationism" halts AI anxiety

This rapid iteration of AI was first ignited by Silicon Valley.

In Silicon Valley, AI is mainly divided into two camps:

• Effective accelerationism (e/acc), this emerging philosophical trend strongly advocates for technological development, promotes unconditional acceleration of technological innovation, and even aims to disrupt social structures;

• Effective altruism (EA), advocates developing and applying technologies that can maximize positive social impact while minimizing potential harm.

These two forces each hold their ground in Silicon Valley, competing against each other.

In effective altruism, the well-known founder of FTX from the crypto circle, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), was a high-profile advocate and an early investor in the AI giant Anthropic of the same camp. However, the collapse of FTX at the end of 2022 led to serious questioning and ridicule of this ideology.

On the other hand, there is also a Sam in the AI circle, namely OpenAI founder Altman, who is an optimist. EA follower Musk was one of the co-founders of OpenAI but left due to ideological differences. Subsequently, Altman raised funds rapidly, spent aggressively, and launched the generative AI ChatGPT in 2022. This product was then called the fastest adopted consumer product in history, pushing Silicon Valley gradually towards the accelerationist path.

During this process, OpenAI also sparked a globally shocking internal conflict due to the ideological struggle between accelerationism and safetyism. Ultimately, Altman emerged victorious and returned, making this event a significant turning point in AI development.

Since then, effective accelerationism has become increasingly popular, serving as the action guide for Silicon Valley elites, AI began to commercialize at full speed and move towards large-scale implementation.

Karpathy used AI to generate replacement risk scores for 342 types of jobs in the United States. In this visual map, green represents safe positions, while red indicates potential for massive automation. Jobs that primarily involve computer use and digital information processing score higher for AI exposure; however, outdoor physical labor and jobs that require interaction with the real world (like electricians, plumbers, etc.) score significantly lower. However, a high score does not imply unemployment; it only means a greater risk of being replaced by AI.

But in the view of Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang, AI will not only not cause unemployment but will also enhance productivity and create more job opportunities; venture capital firm a16z believes that history has repeatedly proven that automation does not lead to permanent large-scale unemployment, and AI is more about augmentation rather than complete replacement of humans; Morgan Stanley's latest report notes that AI will not lead to large-scale permanent unemployment but will change the employment structure.

Block's rehiring case also confirms similar viewpoints, with the first batch of laid-off employees already being called back.

Several Block employees stated on LinkedIn that they received return-to-work invitations due to reasons such as "document errors" and insufficient manpower for key infrastructure. CEO Jack Dorsey previously admitted that the layoff decision might have been a mistake, while some laid-off employees believe that this layoff was more about boosting investor confidence rather than a simple consideration of AI replacement.

In the name of AI, executing corrections

AI is generating FOMO emotions and is also seen as a spreading collective anxiety. However, this wave of layoffs feels more like a "delayed correction."

Recent research from the Oxford Economic Research Institute points out that, although there are individual cases of positions being replaced by AI, macroeconomic data does not support the notion that automation will lead to structural changes in employment. It seems that companies have not widely employed AI to replace employees but rather may use this technology as a shield for regular layoffs.

Attributing layoffs to AI application, rather than admitting to traditional operational mistakes like weak consumer demand or previous over-hiring, can convey a more positive signal to investors.

Laura Ullrich, head of economic research at recruiting platform Indeed, also pointed out in a recent interview that this relates to the over-hiring or recruitment boom that appeared in the post-pandemic era. CEOs are indeed privately acknowledging that companies "remain oversized and too bloated."

During the pandemic, major global economies entered a period of large-scale easing, with the online economy rapidly expanding, leading to a surge of "special need positions." Many leading companies saw their size double or more during this period, with generous pay raises and major expansions becoming the norm.

However, as the economy gradually returns to normal, job demand has started to decline, while the Federal Reserve's interest rate hikes, high rates, and weak consumer spending have also slowed economic growth. More tech companies are beginning to realize that the employee scale blindly expanded in the past few years is redundant and must be slimmed down.

The same is true for the crypto market; pandemic liquidity and low interest rates fostered a huge bubble, and after the tightening of market liquidity, project survival pressure surged, compounded by ongoing sluggish market conditions, making layoffs an inevitable adjustment. Jack Dorsey also acknowledged in response to the layoffs that the company did indeed over-hire during the pandemic.

It can be said that today's large-scale layoffs are not purely triggered by AI but are more an additive effect of the return of the economic cycle and market corrections. Although AI has indeed had a visible impact on certain specific positions, it is more like a catalyst than the fundamental cause.

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。