You’re Not Imagining It:  AI Is Already Taking Tech Jobs - video Dailymotion

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Since the rise of generative AI, many have feared the toll it would take on the livelihood of human workers. Now CEOs are admitting AI’s impact and layoffs are starting to ramp up.  Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardnieva/2025/07/17/ai-tech-layoffs/  Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1  Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:  https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript  Stay Connected Forbes newsletters: https://newsletters.editorial.forbes.com Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes More From Forbes:  http://forbes.com  Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.

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00:00Today on Forbes, you're not imagining it. AI is already taking tech jobs.

00:07Between meetings in April, Misha Kaufman, CEO of the freelance marketplace Fiverr,

00:12fired off a memo to his 1,200 employees that didn't mince words, writing, quote,

00:18AI is coming for your jobs. Heck, it's coming for my job, too. This is a wake-up call.

00:24The memo detailed Kaufman's thesis for AI, that it would elevate everyone's abilities,

00:28easy tasks would become no-brainers, hard tasks would become easy, impossible tasks would become

00:35merely hard, he posited. And because AI tools are free to use, no one has an advantage.

00:41In the shuffle, people who didn't adapt would be, quote, doomed.

00:46Kaufman tells Forbes now, quote, I hear the conversation around the office. I hear developers

00:51ask each other, guys, are we going to have a job in two years? I felt like this needed validation

00:56from me, that they aren't imagining stuff. Already, younger and more inexperienced

01:03programmers are seeing a drop in employment rate. Ruyu Chen, a postdoctoral fellow at the

01:08Digital Economy Lab of Stanford's Institute for Human-Centered AI, said that the total number

01:13of employed entry-level developers from ages 18 to 25 has dropped, quote, slightly since 2022,

01:20after the launch of ChatGPT. It isn't just lack of experience that could make getting a job extremely

01:26difficult going forward. Chen notes, too, that the market may be tougher for those who are just

01:31average at their jobs. In the age of AI, only exceptional employees have an edge.

01:38Chen and her colleagues studied large-scale payroll data in the U.S., shared by the HR company ADP,

01:43to examine generative AI's impact on the workforce. The employment rate decline for entry-level developers

01:50is small, but a significant development in the field of engineering in the tech industry,

01:55an occupation that has seemed synonymous with wealth and exorbitant salaries for more than a

02:00quarter century. Now, suddenly, after years of rhetoric about how AI will augment workers rather

02:06than replace them, many tech CEOs have become more direct about the toll of AI.

02:11Anthropic CEO Dario Amadei has said AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs

02:18and spike unemployment up to 20% within the next five years. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said last month

02:25that AI will, quote, reduce our total corporate workforce over the next few years as the company

02:31begins to, quote, need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today

02:35and more people doing other types of jobs. Earlier this year, Shopify CEO Toby Lutka also posted a memo

02:43that he sent his team, saying that budget for new hires would only be granted for jobs that can't be

02:48automated by AI. Tech companies have also started cutting jobs or freezing hiring explicitly due to

02:55AI and automation. At stalwart IBM, hundreds of human resources employees were replaced by AI in May,

03:02part of broader job cuts that terminated 8,000 employees. Also in May, Luis Van Ahn, CEO of the

03:10language learning app Duolingo, said the company would stop using contractors for work that could be done

03:15by AI. Sebastian Simietkowski, CEO of buy-now-pay-later firm Klarna, said in May that the company had slashed

03:24its workforce 40%, in part due to investments in AI. Microsoft made its own waves earlier this month,

03:31when it laid off 9,000 employees, or about 4% of its workforce. The company didn't explicitly cite AI

03:38as a reason for the downsizing, but it has broadly increased its spending in AI and touted the savings

03:44it had racked up from using the tech. CEO Satya Nadella said in April that as much as 30% of code at

03:50the company is being written by AI. One laid-off Microsoft employee told Forbes, quote,

03:56This is what happens when a company is rearranging priorities.

04:01It's difficult to pinpoint the exact motivation behind job cuts at any given company. The overall

04:07economic environment could also be a factor, marked by uncertainties heightened by President

04:11Donald Trump's erratic tariff plans. Many companies also became bloated during the pandemic,

04:17and recent layoffs could still be trying to correct for overhiring. For full coverage,

04:23check out Richard Nieva's piece on Forbes.com. This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes. Thanks for tuning in.

You’re Not Imagining It: AI Is Already Taking Tech Jobs

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