ANOTHER WEEK, ANOTHER round of tech sector job losses being attributed to the rise of AI. Meta has informed the Irish Government that it plans to cut up to 20% of its Irish workforce and 10% globally, roughly 350 of the company’s 1,800 Dublin-based employees.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg has previously stated that 2026 would be the year AI begins to fundamentally reshape how the company operates, with investments in AI tools aimed at “flattening teams” and reducing layers of management.

Perhaps this is exactly what the future of work looks like: leaner companies powered by AI. But before accepting every AI-linked layoff as inevitable progress, it’s worth remembering that not all bold claims about AI replacing workers have held up.

In 2023, Sebastian Siemiatkowski, CEO of the Swedish fintech giant Klarna, made a declaration that reverberated across boardrooms and newsrooms. “AI can already do all of the jobs that we, as humans, do”. The company stopped hiring, laid off 700 customer service workers, and announced that its AI was handling the workload of hundreds of employees. Early reports claimed savings of $10 million (€8.62 million). The story was everywhere.

Klarna was held up as proof that the AI revolution had arrived.

By 2025, Klarna was quietly rehiring. Siemiatkowski publicly admitted: “We went too far.”

Customer satisfaction had deteriorated badly. The AI could not handle complexity or human emotion. It gave generic responses. It looped customers........

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