Businesses blame AI for job cuts. Critics say it’s a ‘good excuse’

From tech to airlines, major global companies are cutting staff as the real-world impact of artificial intelligence plays out, scaring employees. But critics say AI has become an easy excuse for companies looking to downsize.

Last month, a technical consulting firm Accenture announced a restructuring plan which includes quick exits for workers who are unable to retrain the AI ​​first. Days later, Lufthansa said he would eliminate 4,000 jobs by 2030 as it relies on AI to increase efficiency.

Salesforce also fired 4000 customer support roles in September, saying AI could do 50% of the company’s work. Meanwhile, the fintech firm Klarna has decreased staff with 40% as it aggressively adopts AI tools.

Language learning platform Duolingo stated that it would gradually stop relying on contractors and use AI to fill in the gaps.

The headlines are grim, but Fabian Stefani, assistant professor of artificial intelligence and works at the Oxford Internet Institute, said there may be more to the job cuts than meets the eye.

There may have been some stigma attached to the use of AI before, but now companies are “buying up” the technology to absorb the fallout from challenging business moves like layoffs.

“I’m really skeptical that the layoffs we’re seeing right now are really due to real efficiency gains. It’s more really a projection into AI in the sense of, ‘We can use AI to make good excuses,'” Stefani said in an interview with CNBC.

Companies can essentially position themselves at the edge of AI technology to appear innovative and competitive while hiding the real reasons for layoffs, according to Stephanie.

“There may be various other reasons why companies need to get rid of some of their workforce… Duolingo or Klarna are really prime candidates for this, as there was over-hiring during Corona (Covid-19 pandemic) as well,” the professor said.

Some companies that thrived during the pandemic “hired significantly more” and the recent layoffs may simply be “market clearing.”

“It kind of dismisses people for whom there wasn’t a sustainable long-term perspective, and instead of saying ‘we miscalculated this two, three years ago,’ they can now come to the scapegoat and that’s saying ‘it’s because of AI after all,'” he added.

This model sparked a conversation online. One founder, Jean-Christophe Bougle, even said in a popular Post on LinkedIn that AI adoption is at a “much slower pace” than claimed, and that “not much happens” in large corporations with AI projects even being pushed back due to cost or security concerns.

“At the same time, there are reports of major layoff plans ‘because of AI.’ It seems like a big apology in a context where the economy in many countries is slowing, despite what the incredible performance of stock markets suggests,” said Bugle, who co-founded Authentic.ly.

“We have successfully redeployed hundreds of employees to other areas such as professional services, sales and customer success,” the Salesforce spokesperson added.

Klarna referred CNBC to its co-founder and CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski comments about X where he explained that the company has shrunk its workforce from 5,500 to 3,000 people in two years, but “AI is only part of that story.”

Siemiatkowski attributed the workforce reduction to the reduction of the analytics team to one “success team,” with many then leaving due to natural attrition, as well as the reduction of the company’s customer success team.

Lufthansa and Accenture declined to comment on the matter and did not share further details about its AI restructuring strategy. Duolingo did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

The Budget Lab, a nonpartisan policy research center at Yale University, publishes a report on Wednesday, showing that U.S. jobs have actually been little disrupted by AI automation since ChatGPT launched in 2022.

The lab examined U.S. labor market data from November 2022 to July 2025 using a “disparity index” that measures how much the occupational mix — the share of workers in different jobs — has changed since the debut of AI and compares it to other technological changes, such as the introduction of computers and the Internet. It found that AI has not yet caused mass job losses.

Additionally, economists at the New York Federal Reserve published research in early September, which showed that the use of AI among firms “does not indicate a significant decrease in employment” in the service and manufacturing industries in the New York-Northern New Jersey area.

It found that 40 percent of service firms said they were using AI this year, up from 25 percent last year, while manufacturing firms saw a similar jump from 16 percent last year to 26 percent this year, but very few used AI to lay off workers.

Only 1% of service firms reported that AI caused them to lay off workers in the past six months, down from the 10% who laid off workers using AI in 2024. Meanwhile, 12% of service firms said AI caused them to hire fewer workers in 2025.

In contrast, 35% of service firms have used AI to retrain employees and 11% have hired more as a result.

Stefani said there isn’t much evidence from his research to show large levels of tech unemployment due to AI.

“Economists call this structural unemployment, so the job pie is no longer big enough for everyone, and people will definitely lose their jobs to AI, I don’t think it’s happening on a massive scale,” he said.

He added that concerns about technology ending human work can be seen throughout history.

“It’s happened a dozen times in this century alone, you can go back to ancient times when the Roman emperors kept certain machines because they were worried about it, and the opposite has always happened. The machine made companies, industries more productive.

“It’s allowed for whole new jobs to emerge. If you think about the Internet 20 years ago, nobody would have known what a social media influencer was, what an app developer was, because it didn’t exist.”

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