If profitable companies already cut jobs for AI, should policy track belief or capability?
Goldman Sachs says the big AI layoff wave will wait for the next recession, yet Barclays just cut 5,000 jobs ‘driven by AI’ while profits rose 12%. If displacement starts the moment executives believe the machines can do the work, not when they actually can, should safety nets and retraining be triggered by what firms believe rather than by what the technology has proven?
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In today’s episode of Minds, Bodies, and Terawatts, dated October 23, the hosts dig into Goldman economist Joseph Briggs’s new estimate that AI could displace about 9% of US workers, roughly 15 million people, with the damage arriving in steps during downturns that never climb back. But the same morning Barclays announced 5,000 cuts in good times, which suggests the first wave is already here and arrives on executive belief, not on proven capability. The episode argues that any floor under workers has to be built on belief-time, because waiting for the technology to be verified means waiting until the chairs are already gone. There is real disagreement in the episode about whether that is prudence or panic. Listen to the full discussion and tell us where you land.
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