Meta retreats on worker surveillance; Gen Z told resistance is futile, yet still pushes back; the promotion ladder losing its middle rung; software engineers do AI's homework nightly, unpaid

Meta's spy tool leaks the secrets it pilfered from workers; Oracle fires 21,000, spends $70 billion on machines; firms slash hardest, gain nothing; AI shuts the door to opportunity before you knock

A pattern keeps showing up this year, and yesterday it got harder to argue with. A profitable company sheds thousands of workers, names AI as a reason in its own paperwork, then turns around and pours billions into AI hardware. Oracle just did exactly that. Oracle puts AI in writing Oracle cut about 21,000 jobs over the past year. The number matters, and so does where it came from. The company admitted in its own annual regulatory filing [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-22/oracle-layoffs-fueled-by-ai-reduces-workforce-by-21-000] that AI played a part. The filing says AI deployment “may continue to result in reductions to our workforce.” The cuts brought Oracle’s headcount down to roughly 141,000 from about 162,000 a year earlier. Some teams felt it far more than others. Revenue and Health Sciences saw reductions near 30% [https://cryptobriefing.com/oracle-workforce-declines-21000-ai-restructuring/], while cloud and AI teams were mostly spared. Oracle plans to spend around $70 billion this year building AI data centers [https://www.outlookbusiness.com/corporate/oracle-slashes-21000-jobs-as-tech-giant-warns-of-further-ai-driven-cuts] for customers like OpenAI. The company is cutting people and building machines in the same breath. Meta’s tracking program springs a leak We told you yesterday about Meta’s program that records employee keystrokes and mouse movements to train its AI. It seems, though, Meta paused the program after a data leak [https://www.engadget.com/2199458/meta-is-pausing-employee-tracking-program-after-it-let-the-whole-company-see-sensitive-data/] exposed sensitive worker information to the entire company. So, Meta did not stop surveilling workers because they objected to being watched. It stopped because the watching went wrong. Private conversations, performance data, and transcriptions became visible across the company [https://www.peoplematters.in/news/business/meta-suspends-workforce-ai-training-project-after-sensitive-employee-data-leak-50444]. The program, launched in April, [https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/meta-pauses-ai-initiative-data-exposure-1804446] recorded keystrokes, mouse activity, and occasional screen content from US staff. A company that wants to read every click could not keep those clicks private. Workers noticed. Narrower On-ramps Here is a story about jobs that vanish before anyone gets laid off. A new report from Opportunity@Work warns that AI could wall off millions of “gateway jobs” [https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/skilled-workers-are-finally-gaining-ground-ai-will-decide-whether-they-keep-it-302807994.html] for workers without a four-year degree. Gateway jobs are the entry and mid-skill roles people, typically without college degrees, use to climb into better pay. The report counts up to 11 million of them exposed to AI losses. Read that as the group’s own estimate, since they advocate for these workers. The report notes that 33 states have agreed to drop degree requirements from public jobs. So, AI could open these doors wider or shut them, depending on how employers choose to use it. A lot of cuts, not much payoff Concurrently, tech layoffs are running at roughly 1,100 a day in 2026 [https://www.techtimes.com/articles/318466/20260616/tech-layoffs-hit-1115-day-2026-companies-cite-ai-cuts-fail-boost-returns.htm], close to double last year’s pace. Meta, Oracle, and Block all point to AI. A Gartner study of 350 firms found that the companies cutting the most showed no improvement in financial returns. So the layoffs are not obviously paying off. That gap is why some economists use the term “AI washing.” It describes firms blaming AI for cuts they wanted to make anyway. Treat the daily-rate figures as estimates from layoff trackers, not exact counts. The silent killer is slow hiring Layoffs grab headlines. The bigger shift for young workers isn’t making the front page of the news. Some economists argue that AI is hurting hiring more than it is driving firings [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ai-layoffs-hiring-entry-level-workers/], impacting junior staff the most. Goldman Sachs research found AI trimmed monthly payroll growth by around 16,000 jobs over the past year. Companies are not always cutting people. They are choosing not to add them. One organizational psychologist put the trap plainly. “The people who get laid off don’t necessarily get the next set of jobs, because the roles are different.” India’s AI experiment on steroids For a wider view, look at India. Infosys, TCS, and Wipro have each rolled Microsoft Copilot out to more than 100,000 workers, over 300,000 seats combined [https://www.bwpeople.in/article/infosys-tcs-and-wipro-scale-ai-adoption-to-more-than-300-000-employees-609725]. Wipro says its performance AI review agent cut performance-review effort by nearly 70%. At the same time, these firms are thinning out without big announcements. They lean on delayed hiring and attrition instead. The Microsoft rollout reads like a press release, so take it with a grain of sale. Nevertheless, workers get AI tools dropped onto their desks, and the company gets to do more with fewer staff. To their credit, the firms are paying for retraining. Average learning hours at TCS rose past 120 per employee [https://www.hrkatha.com/news/ai-push-drives-surge-in-employee-learning-hours-report/] this year, with Infosys up 58%. Where this leaves us So, Oracle wrote AI into the official reason it cut 21,000 people, and a respected study found that the firms cutting hardest got nothing to show for it on the balance sheet. Companies are forming around a bet on AI, and the bet has not paid off yet for many of them. Workers, meanwhile, are mere lab rats in a grand experiment of capitalism. Get full access to The AI & Work Chronicle at ailabor.substack.com/subscribe [https://ailabor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Meta retreats on worker surveillance; Gen Z told resistance is futile, yet still pushes back; the promotion ladder losing its middle rung; software engineers do AI's homework nightly, unpaid

Cognizant trims as India’s IT engine cools India’s Cognizant rolled out an AI program it calls Project Leap. It blends worker re-skilling with job cuts. Indian newspaper Mint reported that up to 4,000 roles could go [https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/30/ai-threat-indias-growth-story-jobs.html]. This reaches far past one company. India’s IT and outsourcing sector runs much of the world’s customer support, clerical, and back-office work. When firms there move away from volume hiring toward productivity, the people who answer your support tickets feel it first. Net hiring across India’s top five IT firms already dropped by around 7,000 in the year ending March 2026. The volume model that built India’s white-collar middle class is winding down, and nobody has built the replacement yet. The unpaid homework problem Meanwhile, tech workers around the world are spending nights and weekends teaching themselves AI tools [https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/tech-workers-spending-nights-weekends-110001055.html] because they feel they cannot afford to fall behind. One engineer in Dublin built an AI agent that called US hotels and negotiated room rates for him after work. None of it was part of his job. This is the corporate overhead of the AI shift that does not appear on the ledger. The pressure to keep current moves into personal time. It lands hardest on the people who already worry most about their jobs. The skills race is real, and right now workers are paying for it with their own evenings. The Displacement Audit on Substack has an insightful article [https://substack.com/home/post/p-202256209] that provides an inside look on the stress this is causing IT engineers. Meta backs off its tracking tool Meta scaled back a program that recorded employee keystrokes and clicks to train its AI [https://thenextweb.com/news/meta-applied-ai-unit-revolt-data-labeling-draftees]. More than 1,600 workers signed a petition against it. Staff in one office nicknamed it the “Employee Data Extraction Factory.” After the backlash, Meta began letting employees pause the tracking for 30 minutes at a time. The strange part is that the business is thriving even as morale sinks. Meta posted $56.3 billion in first-quarter revenue, up 33 percent. So the surveillance push was a choice made from a position of strength, not desperation, and certainly not cooperation. Middle managers in the crosshairs The career ladder is losing a rung in the middle, too. Bloomberg reported on a widening corporate move to thin out middle management [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-17/why-companies-are-cutting-middle-managers-in-the-ai-era], anchored on a management manifesto from Jack Dorsey. Dorsey wants a company where an AI “intelligence layer” coordinates the work in place of managers, and individual experts decide and act on their own. The same pattern shows up across Block, GitLab, and Citigroup. For service workers, the sting is in what gets cut. The team-lead or shift-manager job was the usual step up from frontline work. That step is exactly the one companies are now pulling. Typical stories have seen the bottom of the ladder dissolved. This a chunk taken from the middle. Quiet resistance on the inside Some workers are pushing back in their own way. Fortune reported that a portion of younger employees refuse to use mandated AI tools [https://fortune.com/2026/04/08/gen-z-workers-sabotage-ai-rollout-backlash/]. A few admitted to nudging their performance reviews to make the AI look less effective than it is. Surveys keep finding that workers do not reject AI itself. They reject top-down mandates, unclear rollouts, and tools that add busywork instead of saving time. Force the tools on people without training or trust, and you get resignations and quiet sabotage. The friction is a management problem dressed up as a technology problem. The other side of the ledger Scaler’s India AI Workforce Report, drawn from 11,444 professionals, found that workers who built AI skills saw real pay gains [https://www.scaler.com/blog/india-ai-workforce-report-2026/]. Women who moved into AI-enabled roles reported an average salary jump of 145%. One caution here, though. Scaler sells AI training courses, so it has a stake in telling an upbeat story. Read the number as a vendor’s propaganda, not a repeatable phenomenon. Meanwhile, PwC’s 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer, built on more than a billion job ads, found wages growing faster at the most AI-exposed companies [https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/news-room/press-releases/2026/pwc-2026-ai-jobs-barometer.html]. It also found a divide. Jobs that AI “professionalizes,” where it handles the routine work so human judgment matters more, are growing twice as fast as jobs it simply makes easier for anyone to do. Get full access to The AI & Work Chronicle at ailabor.substack.com/subscribe [https://ailabor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Robinhood cuts 10% but won't say "AI"; half your day is now spent babysitting AI; put AI on the org chart and people stop checking its work; Colorado's AI law kicks off in 7 days and nobody's ready

Robinhood had a strange week. On June 16, the company announced it would cut about 290 workers [https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/robinhood-layoffs-2026-company-cuts-144314489.html], roughly 10% of its full-time staff. The odd part is that the company is doing well. CEO Vlad Tenev told employees in a memo that “Robinhood’s business has never been stronger [https://crypto.news/robinhood-announces-layoffs-affecting-290-employees-amid-restructuring-push/].” The company reported record trading volumes in June. He framed the cuts as a way to flatten the organization and raise what he called “talent density.” Here is a detail worth noticing, though: Tenev never mentioned AI [https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/16/robinhoods-note-on-10-layoffs-shows-blaming-ai-isnt-cutting-it/] anywhere in the memo, Tech Crunch noted. He did say the company would use “frontier technologies” to push its execution further. That sounds a lot like AI without saying so. For most of this year, companies rushed to credit AI for their layoffs because investors liked the efficiency story. Now the sentiment has shifted. Blaming AI for job cuts has started to generate worker backlash. Cleverly, Robinhood appears to have read the room. Listen on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ai-labor-report/id1896663061] A Carmaker Launches a Product, Then Cuts the People Who Support It Rivian followed a similar path with different wording. On June 16, CNBC reported the electric vehicle maker laid off hundreds of workers in its service and customer organization [https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/16/rivian-layoffs.html]. The sales and marketing teams were hardest hit. Notice the timing: the cuts came one week after Rivian began delivering its new R2 SUV, the lower-priced vehicle meant to take the company mainstream. Rivian described the move as restructuring to “profitably scale our business.” An analyst at Edmunds said out loud what a lot of people were thinking. “You have to wonder to what degree they do plan on replacing those people with some level of AI and automation,” [https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2026/jun/17/rivian-lays-off-hundreds-of-workers-days-after-new/] he told reporters. Rivian is pouring money into autonomous vehicle technology, including a robotaxi partnership with Uber. A company launching a product while cutting the human workforce built to support that product is a pattern service workers recognize immediately. Most of Us Now Spend More Time Managing AI Than Doing Our Jobs If you have felt lately like your job has quietly turned into babysitting AI, the data backs you up. BCG’s fourth annual AI at Work survey [https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ai-is-reshaping-jobs-faster-than-companies-are-reshaping-work-302789481.html] found that 47% of workers now spend more time managing and directing AI than doing their actual work. The June 3rd survey covered 11,749 workers across 14 markets. Frontline AI adoption hit 74%, up 23 points from last year. Among regular users, 42% report saving a full workday every week through AI. The catch is that almost no organization has figured out what workers should do with that reclaimed time. The report describes a “joy paradox” [https://enterprisedna.co/resources/news/bcg-ai-at-work-survey-strategy-gap-workers-2026/]: 67% of regular AI users say the technology has improved their job satisfaction. Forty-one percent report increased mental strain at the same time. AI is making work both better and worse, often for the same person on the same day. BUY NOW! [https://wimdodson.gumroad.com/l/gods_in_the_machine?_gl=1*19da5a0*_ga*MTEwMjE2MDkwMy4xNzc2OTY4MDQy*_ga_6LJN6D94N6*czE3NzY5NjgwNDEkbzEkZzEkdDE3NzY5NjgxNzIkajU5JGwwJGgw] Get the NEW Book that exposes the Narratives Tech uses to build its AI Empire. $4.95 flat fee for Kindle, Nook, Tablets, and Mobile. No subscription required.3.5-hr reading time. Putting AI on the Org Chart Makes Humans Sloppier Researchers at Boston Consulting Group ran a controlled study of 1,261 managers [https://www.bcg.com/news/6may2026-why-you-shouldnt-treat-ai-agents-employees] across the U.S., Canada, and the EU. They gave participants the same document full of errors, then told different groups it had been produced by a human, by an AI tool, or by a named-AI “employee.” The group that thought a named-AI employee wrote it caught 18% fewer errors. Individual accountability for the mistakes dropped by 9 percentage points. Accountability assigned to the AI rose by 8 points. In other words, the moment a company treats an AI agent like a coworker, people stop checking its work and start blaming it when something goes wrong. Oddly, more than 20% of surveyed companies have already put AI agents on their official org charts. The errors do not disappear, though. They just slip past the humans who used to catch them. BUY NOW [https://wimdodson.gumroad.com/l/invasion_ai?_gl=1*g1iey2*_ga*OTc1NjU2NTcyLjE3NzQwMzA3NjM.*_ga_6LJN6D94N6*czE3NzQwMzMyMjUkbzIkZzEkdDE3NzQwMzQ2ODgkajYwJGwwJGgw]! Get the book that examines how the AI invasion already happened. You just weren’t invited. $9.95 flat fee for Kindle, Nook, Tablets, and Mobile. No subscription required. 2-hr reading time. What Workers at Big AI Companies Are Actually Seeing Gallup surveyed 23,717 U.S. employees [https://www.gallup.com/workplace/704225/rising-adoption-spurs-workforce-changes.aspx] and found a clear split. At organizations adopting AI, 27% of workers say their workplace changed in disruptive ways over the past year. At organizations that have not adopted AI, only 17% say the same. The sharpest finding involves the largest employers. At companies of 10,000 or more that use AI, 33% of workers report their workforce shrinking versus 30% reporting growth. At large companies that have NOT adopted AI, the numbers flip: 36% report hiring more workers versus 23% reporting cuts. Half of Companies Have No Working AI Policy for HR Meanwhile, SHRM’s State of AI in HR 2026 report [https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/research/state-of-ai-hr-2026/full-report] found that 54% of organizations either have no AI policy for HR or describe the one they have as too rigid to be useful. Only 46% plan to use AI in HR at all this year. Of the companies that do have a policy, just 25% call it clear and built to last. The AI & Work Chronicle is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. The Laws Are Coming, and Most Employers Are Not Ready That gap matters more every week, because the regulations are arriving. States are building a patchwork of AI hiring laws [https://darroweverett.com/ai-hiring-workforce-management-2026-legal-analysis-updates/] covering bias audits, impact assessments, and worker notice requirements. Colorado’s AI Act takes effect June 30. California’s SB 951, requiring 90 days notice before AI-driven layoffs affecting 25 or more workers, is still pending. No federal law requires any employer to disclose whether AI drove a job cut. Companies are deploying AI faster than they are writing the rules to govern it, and faster still than the government is writing the rules to govern them. Get full access to The AI & Work Chronicle at ailabor.substack.com/subscribe [https://ailabor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Klarna rehires the staff it fired, as gig workers; skip AI and triple your layoff odds; Wix cuts 1,000 to fund AI; bosses call AI replacement "redesign"; Paytm hires 4,000 who speak AI

Steady jobs are quietly turning into gig work Let me start with the story that should worry the most people. The Guardian looked at how AI is reshaping work, and the pattern is sometimes subtler than a clean layoff. The job survives, but it gets chopped into gig work. The example is Klarna. The company cut hundreds of customer service jobs in 2024 for an AI chatbot, then brought humans back a year later. The catch is how. It rehired them as contractors in what its CEO calls an “Uber type of set-up” [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jun/18/ai-threatens-gig-work-rise], where the bot handles the easy questions and gig workers take the hard ones. Researchers in the piece argue that companies often keep the work but dismantle the full-time role around it, mostly to save money. Listen on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ai-labor-report/id1896663061] The benefits go first, and desk workers like customer service agents, copywriters, and analysts feel it soonest. The Guardian article illustrates the scale of the issue in numbers: A recent survey [https://www.upwork.com/resources/freelancing-stats] from Upwork found that about 60 million Americans, or 39% of the workforce, already perform freelance or gig work either full-or part-time. That number is expected to jump to 86 million – about half of the workforce – by 2027, according to Statista [https://www.statista.com/statistics/921593/gig-economy-number-of-freelancers-us/#:~:text=This%20statistic%20shows%20the%20number,of%20the%20total%20U.S.%20workforce.], a global data intelligence platform. The largest and fastest-growing segment is not rideshare drivers or delivery couriers, but knowledge workers: customer service agents, copywriters, financial analysts, paralegals, writers and coders. Once workers are classified as contractors, rather than employees, “you have the rolling back of generations of hard-won workplace protections,” says Alexandrea Ravenelle, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of Hustle and Gig: Struggling and Surviving in the Sharing Economy. “Literally stuff that our great-grandparents died for, all of those protections are gone.” I write about this trend in my Future Forwarded Substack [https://futureforwarded.substack.com/] series of articles: “The Jenga Job: How AI Will Dismantle Work One Task at a Time [https://futureforwarded.substack.com/p/the-jenga-job-how-ai-will-dismantle],” “I Know Why the Caged Contractor Sings: How Contractor Job Loss Is the First Warning of an AI Labor Crisis [https://futureforwarded.substack.com/p/i-know-why-the-caged-contractor-sings],” and “The AI Tipping Point: How Mass Contractor Income Loss Ushers Recession [https://futureforwarded.substack.com/p/the-ai-tipping-point-how-mass-contractor].” Skipping AI now carries a real cost Here is a number that lands close to home. New Gallup research finds that tech workers who use AI at least monthly face about a 6% chance of being laid off, while those who use it less face about 18%. That is triple the risk [https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/06/18/business/tech-workers-who-dont-embrace-ai-face-triple-the-layoff-risk-gallup-finds/]. The estimate comes from a February survey of more than 23,000 U.S. workers, and the gap held even after accounting for age, education, and industry. The same pattern shows up outside tech, though smaller. One detail stands out. Only about 1% of laid-off workers blamed AI directly, so the shift is happening quietly. Using these tools regularly is starting to look like job insurance. Wix trims about a fifth of its staff Now a quick one that fits the trend. The web-platform company Wix plans to cut roughly 1,000 jobs, about 20% of its workforce [https://intellizence.com/insights/layoff-downsizing/major-companies-that-announced-mass-layoffs/], after a weak quarter and rising AI costs. The company points to efficiency. The workers see the bill landing on them. BUY NOW! [https://wimdodson.gumroad.com/l/gods_in_the_machine?_gl=1*19da5a0*_ga*MTEwMjE2MDkwMy4xNzc2OTY4MDQy*_ga_6LJN6D94N6*czE3NzY5NjgwNDEkbzEkZzEkdDE3NzY5NjgxNzIkajU5JGwwJGgw] Get the NEW Book that exposes the Narratives Tech uses to build its AI Empire. $4.95 flat fee for Kindle, Nook, Tablets, and Mobile. No subscription required.3.5-hr reading time. Paytm cuts 400 jobs and opens 4,000 more Over in India, two things are happening at once. The fintech company Paytm is cutting about 400 roles while opening around 4,000 new ones [https://intellizence.com/insights/layoff-downsizing/major-companies-that-announced-mass-layoffs/] tied to AI and merchant growth. So the work here is shifting rather than vanishing. The roles are being swapped for AI-fluent ones. If you can work alongside the tools, the door stays open. India’s offices race to write AI rules Here is the quieter side of all this. Across India, companies are scrambling to write rules for how workers use AI. The worry is that an employee might paste customer data or a contract into a public chatbot. Under India’s data-protection law, that can carry steep penalties [https://legistify.com/blogs/ai-use-policy-employees/]. So inside many offices there is now a second worry beyond layoffs. It is how employees are allowed to use AI without creating a legal problem for the company. BUY NOW [https://wimdodson.gumroad.com/l/invasion_ai?_gl=1*g1iey2*_ga*OTc1NjU2NTcyLjE3NzQwMzA3NjM.*_ga_6LJN6D94N6*czE3NzQwMzMyMjUkbzIkZzEkdDE3NzQwMzQ2ODgkajYwJGwwJGgw]! Get the book that examines how the AI invasion already happened. You just weren’t invited. $9.95 flat fee for Kindle, Nook, Tablets, and Mobile. No subscription required. 2-hr reading time. A more sanguine view from the top I will end with the other side of the table. The World Economic Forum gathered six business leaders to talk through AI and talent [https://www.weforum.org/stories/2026/01/how-ai-will-affect-work-in-different-industries/]. Their message leans toward redesign rather than cuts, with skills aging fast and roles shifting instead of disappearing. Take it for what it is, the view from the executive chair. Put it all together and the through-line holds. AI is reshaping who keeps steady work, and the people who learn the tools are landing on the safer side of the line. The AI/Labor Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to The AI & Work Chronicle at ailabor.substack.com/subscribe [https://ailabor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Meta spies on staff as morale craters; Walmart swears 2M jobs safe while thinning office; Microsoft warns AI to hollow communities, then ships Copilot; Nvidia boss poo-poos AI job replacement fears

Meta’s AI team is close to a revolt Let me start with the one everybody is talking about. Meta moved several thousand workers into a new Applied AI unit, and a lot of them are unhappy. Many describe repetitive data-labeling and forced reassignments [https://anz.peoplemattersglobal.com/news/ai-and-emerging-tech/whats-happening-inside-metas-ai-division-employees-say-morale-is-at-rock-bottom-50287], and a large group signed a petition against software that tracks their keystrokes and mouse movements. The company’s own technology chief, Andrew Bosworth, did something rare. He admitted the rollout went badly. He told staff that morale is near its worst in 20 years and that leadership did an “atrocious” job [https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/meta-low-morale-ai-restructuring-job-cuts-1803228]. He also noted that median pay slipped from about $417,400 to $388,200. His advice to nervous employees was blunt, if not a bit banal. AI won’t take your job, but someone who knows AI might. Walmart tells its workers not to worry Now to the company that touches the most lives. Walmart employs around 2 million people, and it is telling them their jobs are safe. The reassurance comes with fine print. The company is trimming corporate and middle-management roles, and its leadership has talked about centralizing its platforms as AI reshapes retail [https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0000104169/000010416926000023/pressrelease-11626.htm]. At the same time, Walmart keeps hiring cashiers, stockers, and warehouse staff. Stores still need people on the floor every day [https://www.thehrdigest.com/walmart-layoffs-continue-to-grow-the-corporate-vs-frontline-divide/]. So the message to frontline workers is steady employment, while the message to the office is leaner teams. Microsoft’s CEO compares AI to outsourcing Satya Nadella, who runs Microsoft, warned that AI could “hollow out” whole industries the same way outsourcing once gutted manufacturing. He argued that if the value piles up in a few giant models, the politics will not hold [https://www.thestreet.com/technology/microsoft-ceo-sends-a-blunt-warning-on-ai-and-the-tech-ecosystem]. He pointed back to the first wave of globalization, when the GDP numbers looked fine while the damage to workers and towns ran deep. Meanwhile, Microsoft puts its Copilot assistant inside Word, Outlook, Excel, and Teams. Those are the tools millions of people open every morning. The man warning about the potential harms of AI is also the one pushing the product. State Farm agents feel betrayed State Farm licensed an AI product for all of its agent offices and raised the limit on how many offices one agent can run, from three to six. It also ended a deferred-compensation program that agents were counting on for retirement. Agents are furious, calling it a “false promise” [https://www.nprillinois.org/illinois/2026-06-02/boiling-mad-and-fearing-an-uncertain-future-state-farm-agents-react-to-contract-changes]. One mid-career agent figures the change will cost him about $1 million over ten years. The company says its agents stay central to how it serves customers. The agents hear something different. They hear a lifetime contract getting quietly rewritten. Uber cut its HR team while overspending on AI Here is a smaller story with an outsized point. Uber eliminated about 23% of its People and Places division. The group handles human resources and workplace culture. The timing raised eyebrows. The cut came days after the company admitted it burned through its entire 2026 AI coding budget in just four months [https://www.techtimes.com/articles/317842/20260605/uber-cuts-23-hr-staff-new-president-denies-ai-role-95-engineers-use-it-daily.htm]. Uber says the two are unrelated and that the reorganization was about simplifying overlapping teams. Maybe so. Still, a company that spent its AI money fast and then cut the people who look after its people is going to invite questions. One loud voice says relax Amidst the realities of companies replacing staff because of AI-related decisions, Jensen Huang, who runs Nvidia, thinks the panic is overblown. Speaking on Bloomberg on June 1, he called the idea that AI is destroying jobs “complete nonsense” [https://247wallst.com/investing/2026/06/03/nvidia-ceo-jensen-huang-ai-job-losses-are-complete-nonsense-ai-driving-hiring-surge-instead/]. His argument is that AI makes each engineer more productive, so companies want more of them, not fewer. He is probably right that new jobs come eventually. The catch is timing. Early data shows employment for the youngest software developers falling while their older colleagues hold on. New jobs may arrive. The real question for workers is whether they arrive before the rent is due. Get full access to The AI & Work Chronicle at ailabor.substack.com/subscribe [https://ailabor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]