AI Isn't to Blame for Layoffs at Microsoft and Other Tech Companies

Microsoft became the latest major tech company to announce massive layoffs on Wednesday. Roughly 5% of the company's workforce--or 10,000 jobs--will be slashed, CEO Satya Nadella announced in note to employees published online. In explaining the decision, Nadella pointed to global economic strife, changes in post-pandemic habits, and perhaps most notably, the impact of rapid developments in artificial intelligence. Microsoft is a major investor in OpenAI, a company whose chatbot ChatGPT has both excited and frightened the world in the last couple months because of its ability to respond to written prompts with clarity and complexity. "The next major wave of computing is being born with advances in AI, as we're turning the world's most advanced models into a new computing platform," Nadella wrote.