- Global AI restructuring leads to job cuts; India sees major layoffs as firms shift to AI-native models
- Top AI leaders say job fears are justified
- AI leaders say every major tech tipping point has brought with it anxieties.
Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman is without doubt one of the most powerful and influential figures in the world of artificial intelligence. Suleyman co-founded Google's AI division DeepMind with his childhood friend Demis Hassabis. However Hassabis and Suleyman don't see eye to eye on many things now. But something the one-time friends, neighbours and business partners are aligned on is the growing AI anxiety among people.
"I think there's understandably a lot of anxiety. There's enormous amount of speculation about what's going to happen in the next five to 10 years, whether it's framed as the singularity or whether it's framed as the job apocalypse. These are not helpful framings," Suleyman recently said in a podcast.
The "singularity" mention was a veiled jab at his former ally Hassabis who has said he believes humanity is now at the foothills of singularity. "Singularity" in AI is a theoretical future tipping point when artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence, and Hassabis believes that can be achieved in just three to four years now (by 2029-30).
Suleyman prefers the term "superintelligence" which he defines as an advanced AI system that can operate independently, continuously self-improve, and significantly surpass human capabilities; he believes it can be achieved by mid-2027. He advocates for "Humanist Superintelligence" (HSI), a framework that ensures AI remains safely aligned with human interests. Hassabis too frames AI as a tool created by humans, for humans and believes AI will soon have the cure for "all diseases."
Hassabis is also aligned with younger brother George's childhood best friend Suleyman on the worries among people being justified. "It's right to have some worry and some concern about the future because a lot of it is very uncertain."
In an interview late last month, Hassabis said, "I think a part of it is also how the industry is communicating about what things are going to happen. In my view all of this is yet to be determined. And I think the youth of today are going to be the ones to write the next chapter and make use of all of these incredible technologies to come up with incredible new opportunities that would not exist without it."
Several AI leaders like Grok-maker xAI's Elon Musk, Claude-maker Anthropic's Dario Amodei, and ChatGPT-maker OpenAI's Sam Altman have spoken about massive job losses as AI adoption picks up pace. However, in the run up to their IPOs (initial public offerings) the founder-CEOs have dialled down the fear mongering tweaking their stance to AI will create more jobs and new opportunities.
Billionaire hedge fund boss Citadel Founder and CEO Ken Griffin recently shared his concerns around AI during a conversation at the Stanford Business School.
"I went home one Friday, actually fairly depressed by this (rapid AI progress) because you could just see how this was going to have such a dramatic impact on society."
Griffin is widely considered one of the most powerful and influential leaders in modern finance. The boss of the most profitable hedge fund in history said the rapid progress AI has made in the last few months has him worried as there are clear signs that AI can execute in days what would take a high-value human months.
"In the last few months, there has been a step change function in the productivity of the AI toolkit. It is profoundly more powerful than it was just nine months ago," he said.
Griffin went on to add that he's witnessing the rapid change play out at his own organisation, adding that these are not just mid-tier white collar jobs where the disruption is taking place.
"Work that we would usually do with people with masters and PhDs in finance over the course of weeks or months, being done by AI agents over the course of hours or days. So these are not mid-tier white-collar jobs. These are like extraordinarily high-skilled jobs being automated by agentic AI," he said. Simply put, Agentic AI is an autonomous form of AI where the system can plan and execute tasks by itself without any human guidance or intervention.
The Road Ahead
Among the younger population, especially students there's been a very vocal pushback towards AI as graduating students have booed tech leaders who have tried to talk about how great a technology AI is at commencement speeches at several campuses.
As companies across the globe increasingly rely on AI tools, jobs are shrinking due to AI restructuring. A report published last month by Revelio Labs and the World Economic Forum showed a 35% drop in entry-level job postings.
Last year, Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei had said AI could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs and cause unemployment to rise to 10% to 20%. Elon Musk has also warned that a lot of entry-level as well as high profile jobs will disappear in the days to come as AI becomes more capable. In fact, in 2024, the tech trillionaire famously predicted that "probably none of us will have a job". He envisions a future where working becomes an optional "hobby" because AI and autonomous robots will be able to supply all goods and services.
However, Suleyman believes in a slightly different narrative. "What matters is what we do with technology. I've for a long time argued that we have to place the human first. The purpose of science and technology is to make us all healthier and smarter and happier."
"That's the quest that we've been on as a species for thousands of years of invention. It's the test that we should put superintelligence to again. If it doesn't achieve that test, then I think people will reject it and they'll be right to reject it," he said.
Humanity's focus in the next five years is going to turn to how AI is making them "healthier and happier, smarter, more capable, more productive," he predicted.
Hassabis notes that historically humans tend to be worried around technological tipping points but overcome those challenges eventually.
"I think especially the youth of today, they are going to be the ones to write the next chapter and make use of all of these incredible technologies to come up with incredible new opportunities that would not exist without it. And I think that's been the history of technology advances in the past 20, 30 years. They're always worried about at the time, and then we figure out with human ingenuity, you know, how to overcome those challenges."
A recent Reuters poll showed that more than 50% of Americans fear that the rise of AI could put them or someone in their family out of work. The survey showed that this fear is spread fairly evenly across respondents by age, gender and education level. According to executive outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas US based employers cut 97,006 jobs in May, the highest total for that month since 2020, when Covid was at its peak; 40% of the jobs lost were due to AI.
Just like the rest of the world in the past few months India too has seen a slew of layoffs that are part of the AI restructuring that companies are undertaking. In April 2026, Oracle reportedly laid off around 12,000 employees in India as part of a strategic pivot toward AI.
Even homegrown tech behemoths are shifting gears. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) reduced its headcount by over 12,000 roles in FY26, signaling a major retreat from the traditional, high-volume IT hiring model that defined the sector for decades.
The industry is now witnessing a rapid transition to an "AI Native" model. Firms like Cognizant, Freshworks, and SuperOps are aggressively redesigning their operations around smaller, leaner teams as the landscape of work is fundamentally changing.
