Comment by daxfohl

I think there's an argument that AI is helping the (non-AI) software job market. If tech companies are seen as laying off "too fast", then investors will penalize them for not retaining enough people to compete in AI. So companies have to do some layoffs, both to rebalance for the economic downturn and to claim "progress in AI", but not so much that it makes them look weak to investors. Whether they actually need the employees for anything is secondary.