When Sam Altman observed earlier this year that some companies are using AI as a convenient excuse for workforce cuts they may have made regardless, he wasn’t wrong. Every morning, I open my news feed to another instance of it. I’ve spent more than two decades leading enterprise technology companies through the cloud transition, the mobile revolution, and the platformization of work itself. I know what it looks like when a narrative outpaces the evidence — and this is that moment.
The “transformation” story typically goes like this: AI is here, headcount is a cost, and moving fast on both is what leadership looks like.
The data, however, tells an entirely different story.
The fundamental misread
When you measure AI’s impact at the task level rather than the job level, the picture changes completely.
