Is this the Human-AI Symbiosis?

Could the broad adoption of AI in our workplace (where humans work alongside AI) slow down because it's so successful at replacing human jobs?

Ouroboros - eternal cyclic renewal or a cycle of life, death & rebirth.

Massive Layoffs -> Higher worker productivity (less layoffs) -> Massive Layoffs (when new technology picks up) -> Less Layoffs...

While not all of the recent layoffs were directly attributed to AI, competition to get ahead is pressuring companies to be a lot more surgical at their businesses and free up capacity to invest into AI. As a result, there are almost unprecedented technology-driven layoffs across the industry. When there are a lot more job-seekers than jobs available, people who have a job are a lot more averse to losing their jobs.

As a result, they are willing to work longer hours and put up with requests/culture that they would have previously not entertained.

Interestingly, when i spoke with people still having a job, almost everyone says that they're taking up more work & working longer hours, to cover for impacted colleagues. Hardly anyone mentioned 'Hours are the same', 'I can go home early now because GPT is doing my work'...

Could this result in slower adoption of productivity-based AI solutions, due to?

1. Lack of top-down urgency: Why will companies invest in new technology when the remaining workers can do more?
2. Lack of bottoms-up willingness: When workers are running to meet deadlines, who want to learn about a new solution?

• While one can argue that all the more people should learn to be more productive and leveraging new technology, the reality is that most people are just hunkering down to do their work and no one really has the mind space to learn a new tool that might help them.?
• There are probably 2 main inhibitors: (i) The opportunity cost of learning (ii) uncertainty that these solutions will always work?

While the underlying AI technology as a whole will benefit from this investment, the short-term adoption of AI solutions might be limited. Probably, only those that are directly integrated into our usual workflow, e.g. Google, Microsoft will gain broad usage, while the other independent solutions might take a while more until:

1. The technology has improved massively to make up for gaps in industry insights/data
2. There are teams able to integrate clear industry-specific MSD and insights to bring real value to operations.

I'm definitely observing this from a huge bubble, so it would be great to hear from other folks with different perspectives.

Thanks in advance!

This is an addendum to my previous posts on how to thrive alongside AI.