Mass AI-related layoffs by Silicon Valley giants will soon be repeated in the UK: David Richards
In the past, senior politicians would ask me a simple question whenever I was back in Westminster. “What is happening in San Francisco?” Their reasoning was clear; they believed what happened there would soon happen here.
They were right. The Valley has always been a leading indicator of global change. Once again, it is giving us a glimpse of what is coming our way.
What is happening? Jobs are being cut, and not because of a recession or financial crisis, but because of artificial intelligence.
Microsoft is cutting 6,000 roles across Xbox, LinkedIn and Azure. Dell is letting go 12,000 staff as it pivots to AI infrastructure. HP has announced 2,000 cuts as it launches AI-powered PCs. Meta is trimming five per cent of its workforce to concentrate on AI and virtual reality. Even Google is shedding hundreds of sales and partnership roles as it reorganises around AI.
These companies are not trimming fat; they are making room for machines.
The same is happening elsewhere. Chegg cut almost a quarter of its workforce after declaring it would become “AI-first”. Duolingo shed ten per cent for the same reason. Klarna replaced hundreds of support agents with chatbots. These are not marginal tweaks. They are transformations at the heart of business models.
For years I believed the safest bet was to “learn to code.” It was advice I gave often, and until recently I thought it was sound. Several members of my family went through coding boot camps and built successful careers in technology.
For a long time that route looked secure, with governments, schools, big tech and the media all promising six-figure salaries and guaranteed jobs for anyone who mastered programming. The number of computer science majors in the United States more than doubled after 2014.
Yet now I have changed my mind.
The New York Times recently reported that computer science graduates are struggling to find work, with some ending up at Chipotle. One graduate applied for more than 5,000 jobs and landed only a handful of interviews. Unemployment among computer science and engineering graduates has risen above seven per cent, more than double that of art history majors.
The reason is simple. AI tools such as GitHub Copilot and CodeRabbit now write and debug vast amounts of software, leaving companies far less willing to hire junior developers.
If even the poster child of the digital economy, the software engineer, is no longer safe, then no one should assume their career is future-proof.
The scale of what comes next is staggering. The World Economic Forum predicts 92 million jobs will be displaced by AI and other technologies by 2030, even as 170 million new ones are created. McKinsey suggests up to 800 million roles could be displaced worldwide.
Goldman Sachs goes further still, estimating that AI could affect the equivalent of 300 million full-time jobs, with roughly two-thirds of roles in the United States and Europe exposed to some level of automation.
Nobody agrees on the exact numbers, but the message is clear. Tens, perhaps hundreds, of millions of workers will see their roles altered, automated, or eliminated altogether.
Which brings us back to Britain. What happens in California rarely stays in California. The first wave of automation has already changed retail, banking and travel here. AI is about to accelerate that trend. Unless we act, the next few years could see a wave of job losses across marketing, administration, customer support and even software development.
The danger is that Britain responds too late. In Silicon Valley, disruption is embraced, and workers are expected to adapt. In the UK, we already face skills shortages and deep regional divides. If AI disruption arrives without preparation, entire communities could be hollowed out.
There are two paths ahead. One is to use AI as a blunt instrument to strip out cost, throwing people on the scrapheap. The other is to harness it as an accelerator of human ability, freeing workers from drudgery so they can focus on what requires judgment, empathy and creativity.
British businesses need to be honest about what AI really means for their workforce.
Politicians must stop treating it as a sideshow and start preparing serious reskilling programmes, apprenticeships and safety nets. Schools and universities must equip the next generation not to compete with machines, but to work alongside them.
The Valley has shown us what comes next. The only question is whether we learn from the warning or whether we wait for the tidal wave to reach our shores. When politicians asked me what was happening in San Francisco, they were really asking what was going to happen here. The answer today is stark. AI is reshaping the labour market before our eyes.
And if history teaches us anything, a backlash is inevitable. Two centuries ago, the Luddites smashed the textile machines that had robbed them of their livelihoods. Their revolt was crushed, but their anger was real. Last week in Portland, anti-AI activists circulated flyers calling for a “Butlerian Jihad”, borrowing from Frank Herbert’s Dune.
A data centre was also attacked in what appears to be the first act of anti-AI terrorism. The Luddites failed, but their story reminds us that if we ignore the human cost of technological change, frustration will spill into the streets. The flyers in Portland show it has already begun.
We had better prepare, because the layoffs are only the beginning.
David Richards is managing partner of Yorkshire AI Labs