Lora Kelley, Did A.I. Take Your Job? Or Was Your Employer ‘A.I.-Washing’? NYTimes, Feb. 1, 2025.
A company might lay people off for any number of reasons: It didn’t meet financial targets. It overhired. It was rocked by tariffs, or the loss of a big client.
But lately, many companies are highlighting a new factor: artificial intelligence. Executives, saying they anticipate huge changes from the technology, are making cuts now.
A.I. was cited in the announcements of more than 50,000 layoffs in 2025, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a research firm.
But:
Investors may applaud such pre-emptive moves. But some skeptics (including media outlets) suggest that corporations are disingenuously blaming A.I. for layoffs, or “A.I.-washing.” As the market research firm Forrester put it in a January report: “Many companies announcing A.I.-related layoffs do not have mature, vetted A.I. applications ready to fill those roles, highlighting a trend of ‘A.I.-washing’ — attributing financially motivated cuts to future A.I. implementation.”
The term echoes popular descriptors of misleading marketing practices, such as greenwashing and ethics washing. It started bubbling up a few years ago, mostly to call out companies that claimed to be using A.I. when they weren’t. But lately, it has been used more broadly to gesture at companies emphasizing A.I. to explain things like layoffs when the picture may be more complex.
Why am I not surprised? There's more at the link.
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