Technology & innovation
A majority of managers at large companies are now using AI to help make layoff decisions, according to a July survey of 1,000 U.S. managers at companies with more than 500 employees, conducted by ResumeTemplates.com.
59% of managers use AI to help decide who gets laid off; 24% do so often or all the time. 43% have let AI make a layoff decision with no human review; 17% do so often or all the time.
Among the factors AI is asked to weigh: performance (80%), attendance (57%), salary (42%), sick days or medical leave (31%), and age (14%).
38% of managers received no training on using AI ethically in HR decisions; 58% cannot confirm their company tested the AI tool for bias. 13% of managers have already replaced a worker's job with AI.
When the managers using AI were never trained on it, and the company cannot confirm the tool was tested for bias, there is no way to know what it weighs or whether the decision is defensible."
Read more via ResumeTemplates.com
Most C-suite leaders are bullish on AI's business potential, but HR chiefs are the outliers, according to a global survey of nearly 800 executives conducted by consulting firm Protiviti in April.
Nearly 80% of executives expect AI to improve performance and drive revenue growth within three years; CHROs are the only C-suite leaders who don't rank business value capture as AI's primary objective by 2029.
Only 13% of CHROs strongly agree their organization's job designs are AI-ready, compared to 28% of C-suite leaders overall.
Just 14% of CHROs strongly agree their organizations' learning capabilities are AI-ready, versus 36% overall.
Only 5% of CHROs expect at least half of HR work to be AI-enabled within three years, even though more than 80% of HR activities are considered well-suited for automation.
82% of CHROs expect a human-plus-digital workforce by 2030, compared to 93% of other C-suite leaders.
Read more via Protiviti
A three-year survey of students at American University's Kogod School of Business found rapid growth in AI adoption and a sharp rise in employer expectations around AI skills.
The share of students asked by potential employers about their AI capabilities rose from 11.6% in 2024 to 42.6% in 2026.
More than 80% of students used AI tools for academic work in the past six months; the share using AI 11 or more times per week rose from 6.2% in 2024 to 29% in 2026.
Brainstorming was the top use case across all three years; coding has become the second most desired skill students want to learn.
Nearly half of students expressed some concern about academic integrity and AI use.
43.5% reported using AI as a shortcut or substitute for their own work rather than a supplemental tool.
Read more via Kogod School of Business
Vanguard senior economist Adam Schickling is pushing back on predictions of widespread AI-driven white-collar job losses, comparing the current moment to the introduction of ATMs in the 1980s.
ATMs automated some bank teller functions but ultimately lowered costs, allowed banks to open more branches, and increased demand for loan officers, credit analysts, and fraud specialists.
Isolated task automation rarely causes large-scale job losses, Schickling argues, except in occupations built around a very narrow range of activities.
Meaningful disruption happens when new technologies combine with new workflows, business models, and institutional changes that fundamentally reorganize how work is done.
Apollo Global Management economist Torsten Sløk has made similar arguments, citing Jevons paradox: efficiency gains from new technology tend to generate more jobs over time, not fewer.
Read more via Business Insider
Almost half of employed U.S. adults now use AI for work, according to a new poll from nonprofit AI research center Epoch AI and Ipsos.
More than 20% of those using AI for work do so every day.
1 in 5 employed adults report using AI for tasks that previously would have gone to a co-worker or contractor.
23% used AI in the past week to help read documents; 22% used it to analyze or evaluate data.
ChatGPT was the most widely used tool (34%), followed by Google's Gemini (24%) and Microsoft's Copilot (15%).
People are figuring out how to divide work between themselves and the AI. So far, this does not necessarily mean that there is automation of whole jobs, but there are tasks within these jobs through which AI is entering the workforce."
Read more via NBC News
Two-thirds of American workers expect AI to make the overall worker experience worse, not better, according to an Ipsos survey of 1,533 employed and job-seeking adults conducted on behalf of The Groundwork Collaborative.
Three in ten workers use AI at least weekly, but adoption is concentrated: roughly half of workers earning $100,000 or more, those with bachelor's degrees, and white-collar employees use AI tools at least a few times per month, compared to one-quarter or fewer of blue-collar workers, those earning under $50,000, and those with a high school education or less.
Most workers expect AI to eliminate positions and increase pressure on remaining staff rather than free up time from routine work.
Views on personal career impact split by education: nearly half of college-educated workers believe AI will help them in their job, compared to just 1 in 5 workers with a high school education or less.
Unemployed respondents were more likely to say AI is already having a negative impact on their line of work.
Read more via The Groundwork Collaborative
India recorded more AI-related hires than layoffs between 2022 and August 2026, according to a Nomura Holdings analysis of 69 anecdotes across Asia, a finding Nomura says runs counter to the prevailing narrative of mass AI-driven displacement.
India recorded 83,100 AI-related hires during the period versus 31,921 layoffs and instances of attrition.
Most hiring was in IT services; most losses were in support roles replaced by chatbots.
Across Asia, AI-related hiring totaled 130,758 jobs, more than 90% of them in technology; 60,654 jobs were lost, about 60% of them in financial services.
AI is creating a two-tier labor market, reducing demand for entry-level workers while boosting demand for more experienced employees.
Displaced workers rarely transition into AI engineering roles, Nomura cautioned, meaning aggregate gains mask real distributional pain.
Read more via Bloomberg
British firms using AI are becoming more productive, but the gains are coming at the cost of job opportunities, according to Bank of England analysis published this week.
Vacancies in roles most exposed to AI fell 15% over the past three years, compared to declines of 10% for medium-exposure and 6% for low-exposure occupations.
Customer service and administrative roles saw the sharpest drops, with vacancies falling more than 20%.
Software and IT consulting firms increased their contribution to annual productivity growth tenfold compared with the decade before Covid.
BOE Governor Andrew Bailey has said AI's effect on productivity is likely to follow a J-curve, as businesses take time to learn how to use the technology effectively.
LinkedIn is letting users flag AI slop -- and pulling one of its own AI tools in the process. The platform is testing a feature that lets members privately report posts or comments that seem AI-generated, with flagged content feeding back into detection models. Authors will be notified in their analytics dashboards when their posts get reported. LinkedIn is also removing its "enhance your post" feature, replacing it with a proofreading tool that checks grammar without rewriting in AI voice. (Social Media Today)
AI job candidates are passing technical interviews and then vanishing. Arena CEO Anastasios Angelopoulos says his company has interviewed applicants who turned out not to be real people. "This person wasn't real. It was AI," he said on a podcast this week. Arena is now considering requiring new hires to complete onboarding in person, laptop pickup included. The FBI warned in 2025 that North Korean IT workers had used AI and face-swapping technology to secure remote roles at U.S. companies and steal proprietary data. Gartner estimates one in four candidate profiles worldwide could be fake by 2028. (Business Insider)
Workers are quietly rewriting their LinkedIn profiles to add AI experience they didn't have at the time, according to a new NBER paper that tracked cached profile data. At least one in five LinkedIn users has updated old job descriptions after leaving those roles, with AI mentions rising sharply and DEI language falling. The edits cluster around job transitions. Most likely to retroactively polish their resumés: AI product managers. Least likely: dentists. (Financial Times)
Zillow laid off more than 500 employees, roughly 7% of its global workforce, as the company shifts further into AI-driven operations. CEO Jeremy Wacksman said the cuts were necessary to "grow at scale" and "work differently," though Zillow did not confirm whether AI directly replaced the eliminated roles. The company cut roughly 200 more positions in January. (MyNorthwest)
