AI can absolutely reduce headcount

… AI can absolutely reduce headcount. It already could 2 years ago, when we were just getting started. At the time I worked at a company that did just that, succesfully automating away thousands of jobs which couldn't pre-LLMs. The reason it ""worked"" was because it was outsourced headcount, so there was very limited political incentive to keep them if they were replaceable. The bigger and older the company, the more ossified the structures are that have a want to keep headcount equal, and ideally grow it. This is by far the biggest cause of all these "failed" AI projects. It's super obvious when you start noticing that for jobs that were being outsourced, or done by temp/contracted workers, those are much more rapidly being replaced. As well as the fact that tech startups are hiring much less than before. Not talking about YC-and-co startups here, those are global exceptions indeed affected a lot by ZIRP and what not. I'm talking about the 99.9% of startups that don't get big VC funds. …