Executives are stumbling over themselves to replace pesky and expensive human labor with AI.
In the latest instance, the billionaire cofounder and CEO of software giant Atlassian Mike Cannon-Brookes announced that 150 people would be laid off, with some jobs being replaced with AI tech, outlets including Sky News report.
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the cuts affect customer service roles exposed to AI.
Cannon-Brookes made the announcement over a video call from his home. Affected staffers are expected to be paid for the next six months, softening the blow a little.
It’s a sign of the times, though, as executives are looking to automate vast swathes of the job market with the help of AI. The tech industry, in particular, has been rocked by mass layoffs for years now as companies double down on multibillion-dollar investments in AI data center buildouts and poaching high-profile talent from their competitors.
The news comes after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman warned that entire job categories — including the customer support roles that took a hit at Atlassian — could soon be wiped out by AI.
“Now you call one of these things and AI answers,” Altman told Federal Reserve vice-chair for supervision Michelle Bowman during a recent appearance. “It’s like a super-smart, capable person. There’s no phone tree, there’s no transfers. It can do everything that any customer support agent at that company could do.”
Meanwhile, Atlassian’s other billionaire cofounder, Scott Farquhar, defended the layoffs, telling reporters today that Australia’s copyright laws should be revised so AI companies had free rein to mine data unobstructed.
“If we make call centre staff more productive, people aren’t going to call more [and] we’ll probably need less call centre staff,” Farqhuar said, as quoted by the Herald. “Some parts of our economy will grow significantly as AI makes them more productive, and some parts of our economy will shrink as we do that.”
In a company blog post a spokesperson highlighted to the newspaper, Atlassian pointed to its code of ethics, justifying its mass layoffs.
“Our value of ‘Build with Heart and Balance’ is about making the hard, right decisions with passion, empathy, and care,” the blog post reads.
Cannon-Brookes already came under fire earlier this year after buying a personal jet for upwards of $75 million — despite his climate advocacy and push for solar energy, Sky News reports.
“I’m not denying I have a deep internal conflict on this,” he wrote in a LinkedIn post back in March, arguing he needed his plane for “personal security” reasons.
More on AI layoffs: Sam Altman Says OpenAI Is Poised to Wipe Out Entire Categories of Human Jobs