Amazon's move this week to slash thousands of corporate jobs fed into a longstanding anxiety: that Artificial Intelligence is starting to replace workers.
The tech giant joined a growing list of companies in the US that have pointed to AI technology as a reason behind layoffs.
But some question whether AI is fully to blame - and have voiced scepticism that recent high-profile layoffs are a telling sign of the technology's effect on employment.
Chegg, the online education firm, cited the "new realities" of AI as it announced a 45% reduction in workforce on Monday. When Salesforce cut 4,000 customer service roles last month, its chief executive said AI agents were doing the work.
UPS said on Tuesday that it has cut 48,000 jobs since last year. The delivery company's chief executive previously linked redundancies, in part, to machine learning.
