AI, Tech Layoffs, and Me
Buckle up, dear readers, because today’s excursion features twists, turns, intrigue, and personal reflections on the precarious nature of trust during a time that calls for vigilance bordering on paranoia.
I have read in recent months, including this week, that LinkedIn, owned by Microsoft, continues to shed significant numbers of employees. On Monday, LinkedIn announced cuts to about 668 positions across “its engineering, product, talent and finance teams.” In a banal and vacuous press release, LinkedIn perfunctorily observed that “talent changes are a difficult, but necessary and regular part of managing our business." I don’t doubt the sentiment, however awkwardly and weakly expressed, but I would remind LinkedIn’s grandees that such changes are incomparably more difficult for those subjected to them.
The latest employee cull follows more than 700 layoffs announced by LinkedIn in May. Microsoft has also shed staff recently, even as both Microsoft properties continue to grow their businesses. Futurism posits that the layoffs at LinkedIn, and within the broader Microsoft empire, might be collateral damage resulting from the adoption of AI:
“It's hard to overlook Microsoft's all-in shift toward AI — which, it's worth noting, has included LinkedIn, which earlier this year unveiled a suite of generative AI tools for sales, marketing and recruiting.
The news also reflects broader trends, coming on the heels of Stack Overflow laying off more than 100 workers after seeing declining traction as programmers flock to AI coding tools such as the Microsoft-owned Github Copilot, which is undergirded by OpenAI's GPT-4.”
I readily concede that Futurism doesn’t cite corroborating evidence to validate its speculative supposition. We don’t know that AI has led to the staff cuts at LinkedIn and Microsoft. It’s reasonable, though, to suspect that AI, wielded by CFOs and CIOs as an autonomous axe, might be used to shed people and cut costs. While many breakthroughs are forecast for AI, most C-level executives will be inclined to view it initially as the apotheosis of cost-cutting technologies.
AI First, People Later, Savings Foremost
Indeed, AI-first startup companies are encouraged by their investors to turn to AI first and foremost, rather than to wetware old-school humans, when tasks need to be completed and jobs need to be filled. In a New Yorker article that focuses principally on the travails of and prospects for San Francisco, the following commentary on AI companies and AI-first startups appears:
“The best A.I. companies and engineers are all in San Francisco and the Bay Area, and they don’t want to work separated and in silos,” the venture capitalist and political funder Ron Conway told me. It is true that three of the top players, OpenAI, Google AI, and Anthropic, in which Amazon has invested four billion dollars, are within city limits. It is also true that, just as app startups required fewer employees than, say, Citigroup, A.I. needs less office space than older tech: the great promise of A.I., after all, is to obviate the need for labor.
“The A.I. industry is currently, but not for long, composed mostly of humans, and these humans are a social bunch,” Jeremiah Owyang, an entrepreneur and investor who works out of an Airstream trailer, said. “I’ve been to meetups on the beach, bonfires. I’ve been to house parties. That is their life stage. This is when you get your partners, get your V.C.s.” Such human pleasures wouldn’t last, he said. Workplaces in the industry were transitioning to a model known as A.I. First. “A.I. First means you turn to A.I. before you talk to a human. A.I. First means you turn to an A.I. before you hire. If the A.I. doesn’t do it, you build it. If you can’t build it, then you hire someone.” He added, “That is a precursor of what’s going to happen to corporate America.”
I have no doubt that this is happening. It will continue to happen for the foreseeable future. There’s an inexorable quality to epochal technological advances, such as AI, an inevitability that overcomes any and all objections and resistance. Luddites didn’t triumph in their efforts to deny factory automation in the 19thcentury, and their modern-day successors, if such an analogy has purchase, are unlikely to meaningfully impede the relentless march of AI.
Nonetheless, we need to be honest with ourselves about what we’re witnessing. Major changes, not only to workforces but to our societies, are playing out, imperceptibly at first, but more glaringly and irrefutably before long. What’s happening is reminiscent of the quote by the character Mike Campbell in Ernest Hemingway’s first novel, The Sun Also Rises. When asked how he went bankrupt, Campbell replies: “Two ways. Gradually and then suddenly.”
What we should want to do is prepare now, while change is occurring imperceptibly and gradually, before it overwhelms us with seemingly sudden, juddering transformations. I’m not prepared to provide comprehensive policy prescriptions here and now, but I would like to think that wiser heads than mine are giving the matter serious thought.
Dissimulation and Intrigue on LinkedIn
We’re now about to digress sharply while keeping in mind the succession of staff cuts at LinkedIn. Perhaps – and here’s where I offer my own speculative theory – the cuts are going too far, and LinkedIn is compromising its own security and that of its users. I don’t know this for a fact, but you’ll soon learn why I have my doubts.
Recent reports suggest that LinkedIn is increasingly used as a vehicle for deceit, fraud, and even geopolitical espionage. Presuming the reports are accurate, should we attribute this development to the site’s staffing reductions or to run-of-the-mill carelessness and dereliction? Either way, the situation warrants our scrutiny and LinkedIn’s attention.
Now that we’ve executed an abrupt zig in the narrative, prepare yourselves for a sharper zag: I was recently targeted on LinkedIn by someone who later revealed themselves to be from, if not resident in, Shenzhen, China. Originally, this person – I presume it was a person and not a bot – presented under an assumed name, and indicated on their biographical profile that they were employed in a junior capacity at an investment bank in the San Francisco area.
For that reason, I was willing to accept this particular invitation to connect on LinkedIn. In my former capacity as a market analyst at IDC, I dealt often with investment banks and other investors (both on the buy and sell sides), and it seemed conceivable that, even though I didn’t know the person who extended the invitation, that somebody in their firm might have suggested reaching out to me.
At this point, I should note that the LinkedIn outreach occurred just after I published a public post here, on the site you’re reading now, titled “Behind Modi’s Warning of Rare Earths “New Colonialism.” (My new LinkedIn connection cited the post when extending the invitation.) You might recall that I dealt in that post with rare-earth-related geopolitical calculations and tensions between India and China. Let’s keep that context in mind, as it might be relevant.
Shortly after accepting the LinkedIn invitation from the ostensible investment-bank employee, I had reason to be suspicious. Things took a turn for the weird as my new connection persistently attempted to flatter, wheedle, and ingratiate. The tone of the messages was not like most correspondence I have experienced on LinkedIn; it was overly familiar, conspicuously personal in nature rather than coolly professional.
The situation grew weirder when my interlocutor, perhaps discouraged at my lack of chumminess, attempted to move discussion to one of two instant-messaging services, neither of which I use. My new LinkedIn contact even went to the trouble of directing me to sites where I could download the IM clients. I demurred and declined politely, at which point my interlocutor informed me that she/they (I have no idea whether this person presented themselves accurately or honestly in any respect) would leave LinkedIn shortly. True to their word, at least in this instance, the profile was gone within days. I have not heard from them since, not that I mind.
Questions, No Answers
Looking back on the entire bizarre episode, I wonder whether LinkedIn could do more to protect its users and its own reputation. I also wonder whether the individual who targeted me was a run-of-the-mill fraudster or someone involved, at some indeterminate level, in Chinese intelligence.
Even now, I can’t help thinking that it’s unlikely. Why would they target me? Would they really be so deeply concerned about what I write here? Would they want to influence my opinions, color the content I write? In their eyes, would I be considered a threat or a potential conduit?
I have no answers to these questions, and it’s likely they'll never be resolved. Some things can't be known.
What I do know is that “zero trust” is more than a security model these days. Sinister intrigue pervades the digital realm, and the unwary are carrion for predators. In the near term, AI is unlikely to ameliorate the situation, and it might even play a part in making it worse, considering that malefactors seem particularly adroit and ingenious in their application of new tools and technologies.