Am I going to be fired by AI? How corporate America is being seduced by AI and algorithms in the ‘forever layoffs’ era

‘Workforce management’ and ‘work intelligence tools’ are proving irresistible—and ensnaring women, people of color, and those on protected leave. Nearly 500 workers reveal how worried they are about AI-powered layoffs.

[Source image: Getty Images]

For five years, the former Meta employee had been feted as a high performer by her managers. She had even received a rare equity award in recognition of her performance, which had never fallen below an “exceeds expectations” rating. 

Imagine her surprise, then, when she was unceremoniously laid off this past spring.

Perhaps she should have seen the writing on the wall. After she took a medical leave in late 2025, her performance rating slipped. It turned out she’d initially been given an “exceeds expectations” rating, but her manager had been forced to change her rating to fit a bell curve. Her job responsibilities also changed substantially. She had always ranked high on the internal dashboards Meta used to track AI adoption, which categorized its most avid practitioners as “AI first” or “AI native.” But after returning, she noticed her scores had dropped and was startled to realize the dashboards had not taken into account that she was on protected leave. 

Another employee impacted by the layoffs, a former director at Meta, had come to a similar conclusion. He monitored his team’s usage of artificial intelligence closely, almost on a daily basis, and noticed the dashboards had “failed to distinguish employees’ leave from lack of engagement,” as he said in recent legal filings. In other words, there was no way to detect if someone’s ranking had been compromised simply because they were on leave.

In an era of forever layoffs, some tech workers have suspected that an algorithm or AI could be responsible for picking off employees. Now, it seems, those fears may be realized, as captured by a novel lawsuit that the Meta employees brought in July, alongside a number of former colleagues who were also laid off this year. The 26 anonymous plaintiffs made a bold claim: They accused Meta of using AI-enabled systems to determine which employees would be laid off in a major round of cuts this year—and that, as a result, the company had disproportionately targeted people who needed accommodations for disabilities or took parental leave.

Job displacement isn’t the only consequence of widespread AI adoption. A Fast Company LinkedIn poll reveals . . .

that the fears of being ousted by AI are palpable, and not just for disgruntled tech workers. More than two-thirds of people surveyed said they were worried about their company deploying AI to select employees for layoffs. Of more than 480 respondents, 37% said they were “very” concerned about the prospect of AI being used to that end.

For months, Meta has strenuously denied the claims laid out in the lawsuit, insisting humans were involved throughout the layoff selection process. In one declaration, Linh Doan, an HR leader, stressed that “AI did not select anyone for termination. AI did not assist anyone in making selection decisions.”

But those kinds of proclamations may be too little, too late. Workers know their employers already use automated tools to collect all kinds of data that informs hiring and promotion decisions. Major companies like JPMorgan Chase, Disney, and, of course, Meta are now enlisting AI to draft self-assessments and performance reviews. People analytics tools often track absenteeism and sick days, an exercise in productivity theater that employers nonetheless use to evaluate worker output—even though relying on that kind of data could harm people who take leave. 

So it’s not hard to imagine that all this data could influence layoff decisions, as companies are armed with more information on their employees than ever before. Some managers and HR leaders have said as much in anonymous surveys, where they admit to using AI to trim head count. A handful of states have already passed legislation that will force companies to be more transparent about how AI factors into termination decisions, in anticipation of the potential impact on workers. Meanwhile, high-profile lawsuits against HR tech companies like Workday and Eightfold indicate that we are just beginning to understand how AI use could perpetuate discrimination in other stages of the employment cycle. 

As AI becomes more pervasive across corporate America, it is increasingly difficult for workers to assess the extent to which it may be used in layoff decisions and how all the data companies are hoovering up could be wielded against them. Perhaps the real concern is not whether AI is conducting layoffs—but that there is so little visibility into how AI is radically transforming the way companies make decisions........

© Fast Company