Goldman says AI layoffs are starting to leave a ‘long-lasting’ scar, just like the last 40 years of history

5 min read

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google.

Add Yahoo on Google

22

Goldman Sachs has tracked four decades of Americans who lost their jobs to technology. The first workers laid off from AI-exposed jobs are starting to look a lot like them, the investment bank wrote in a note published Thursday.

Goldman economist Pierfrancesco Mei found that workers displaced from AI-exposed jobs since 2025 took about a month longer to find a new job than other displaced workers. They were also roughly 10 percentage points more likely to still be unemployed a year after losing their job. Those effects are "comparable in magnitude" to what Goldman found in earlier waves of technological change, he wrote, calling the damage from those waves "long-lasting." READ MORE

I run an 8-person startup that uses AI agents. We don't let our agents run on vibes — here's the playbook system we created

My first official role in AI was at Facebook. I started as an intern and then joined full-time in 2018. I worked on AI research and development for the ads system that's powered by AI.

I don't have an engineering degree or background; I studied management information systems at The University of Texas at Austin. Part of why I think I got my role at Facebook was because I spent time building my own side projects and teaching myself how to train AI models and do data analysis. READ MORE

There’s not enough money in the world to pay for the AI boom

The biggest bet in the history of the United States keeps getting bigger, and we’re all hanging on for the ride.

Technology companies recently launched a record scramble for cash to pay for data centers, computer chips, and technology and equipment to power artificial intelligence. This boom is so expensive that even Silicon Valley giants are bleeding cash, and companies are now racing one another to collect or borrow other people’s money for the estimated $10 trillion of AI-related spending in coming years. READ MORE

AI’s Most Active Startups Are Becoming Serial Acquirers

Some of the AI industry’s fastest-growing startups are becoming serial acquirers, buying smaller companies to fill product gaps, enter new markets and bring specialized teams in-house, a review of Crunchbase data shows. While AI giant OpenAI is by far the busiest of these buyers, well-funded startups in legal tech, customer service and software development have also made multiple acquisitions this year.

The buying spree has pushed acquisitions of AI startups by other venture-backed AI companies to 195 through Sept. 29, according to Crunchbase data — 14% more than in all of 2025. Yet the number of buyers grew just 2%, indicating that increasingly active acquirers are driving much of the increase. READ MORE

Who are salaried workers indebted to? How much of their monthly salary will be taken away by AI every month?

Recently OpenAI pulled a bold move: the $200-per-month ChatGPT Pro keeps its original price, but the available usage quota has been cut, which immediately sparked widespread outrage on overseas social platforms. Even more outrageous, it also launched a new tier priced at $500 per month, which essentially means the former "unlimited access version" has been downgraded to a "trial version". If you want to keep enjoying full features, you have to pay more!

The first reaction of many people after seeing this is not anger, but a sense of unease. These days, AI tools are "getting higher and higher pay" at an increasingly fast pace. As their "bosses", shouldn't we also consider cutting unnecessary costs and improving efficiency? READ MORE

AI: Full Speed Ahead in a Dark Unknown

Kristen Welker asked Bill Gates last weekend on “Meet the Press” whether artificial intelligence could lead to the end of humanity. Mr. Gates replied that if weaponized, AI is powerful enough to “drive events that cause a billion deaths.” “It’s pretty hard to get to 100%,” he said, almost comfortingly. Relying on AI companies to police themselves is insufficient: “No one thinks self-regulation is enough.” A failure to mandate safeguards is “completely irresponsible.” “We have created an intelligent species that in many respects is already smarter than we are.” In the next few years it will be “insanely smarter than we are.” READ MORE

This AI startup has 14 employees and a $10B valuation

Instinct has managed to turn a tiny team into a huge AI company, reaching a $10B valuation while still in early access and building an agent designed to handle the messy, mundane tasks of everyday life.

The company said Monday it raised an additional $1B from Sequoia Capital, Benchmark Capital, and Coatue. Instinct has just 14 employees, making the size of its valuation particularly striking relative to its workforce. READ MORE

Jobs Hit Hardest in the AI Era Are Making a Comeback

Jobs that AI was supposed to replace are making a comeback, but mostly for senior workers, not the new graduates who trained for them.

Indeed job postings for software developers fell 73% from their February 2022 peak to February 2025, a slide that began nine months before OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot launched, according to an Investopedia analysis of Indeed data. But over the past year, postings for the most AI-exposed jobs have rebounded faster than those for less AI-exposed positions. READ MORE

Your Data Could Outlive the Startup You Gave It To. Elon Musk Wants to Buy What's Left

Elon Musk's SpaceX has been talking, internally, about buying the leftover customer files of startups that already went under. Not licensing data from companies that are still operating and can say no. Buying the digital estate of companies that no longer exist to say anything at all.

The discussions are happening inside SpaceXAI, the artificial intelligence division born in February when SpaceX merged with xAI. People familiar with the talks told Bloomberg they're informal and might go nowhere. But the idea makes sense from the perspective of an AI lab racing for the frontier. READ MORE

The Quiet Way A.I. Is Hitting the Work Force

In May 2025, Dario Amodei, the chief executive of Anthropic, said artificial intelligence could wipe out half of entry-level white-collar jobs within five years, pushing unemployment higher than 10 percent.

More than a year later, even as A.I. models have made leaps that prompted Mr. Amodei to warn of “catastrophic” consequences for humanity if the current pace of development goes unchecked, the unemployment rate remains low. In fact, it’s fallen, to 4.1 percent in August. So is A.I., despite the doomsaying, having no impact on the labor market after all? READ MORE

A costly mistake? Report claims a third of employees fired due to AI will need to be rehired in the next few years

People laid off from their roles due to a corporate refocusing on AI could soon find themselves rehired – or at least, their former roles being advertised, new Gartner research has claimed.

It predicts that by 2027, 75% of organizations who expected to make cost savings by focusing on AI productivity over human endeavor will be overtaken by companies who reinvested those savings in modernization and training. READ MORE

'No one is prepared for the consequences': Even OpenAI chief scientist is saying AI development needs to slow down

OpenAI is taking the post-Hugging Face fallout very seriously. Just days after the release of GPT-6 Astra, Chief Scientist Jakub Pachocki believes that development into artificial intelligence should be slowed across the board. Not just by OpenAI, but by every company across the AI industry.

Writing on the OpenAI website, Pachocki said AIs "present clear new dangers" for computer security, and that "no one is prepared for the consequences of a continued rapid rise in machine intelligence." READ MORE

She posted a video of herself singing in the car with her child. Then Meta's AI questions started

Kalie Robins was driving along with one of her daughters in the back seat of her car last week, the two of them singing a song together. She posted the video to Instagram, with her child's face concealed so she isn't identifiable — or so she thought.

Robins doesn't usually watch her videos after she posts them, she says, but she got an email from Meta about a copyright notification. Since she had music playing in the video, she says, it flagged the song. She went back to look at the video and when she scrolled down she saw the prompt from Meta AI appended:

"Who's the child passenger?" it asked. READ MORE

Zuckerberg, Musk make plea at G20 for more AI data centers

Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk on Tuesday stressed the need for more AI data centers and the electric power needed to support them at a meeting of G20 technology ministers focused on the disruptions and opportunity brought by artificial intelligence.

The US tech bosses spoke virtually at a G20 meeting in Chapel Hill, North Carolina organized by the White House, which is dedicated to keeping the AI revolution largely free of government rules and scrutiny. READ MORE

The AI Industry Has Acted So Badly That It’s Now Dealing With a Huge Wave of Hatred

The tech overlords pushing the AI boom are quickly wearing out what little welcome they had.

You may have noticed big-name AI labs pushing new commercials lately. Meta's new 60-second ad spot insists that the "future is for everyone," even as CEO Mark Zuckerberg's personal net worth eclipses the GDP of Hungary. Anthropic's new commercial for Claude assures viewers that there's "hope in hard questions," seemingly embracing the discomfort that comes when your software is used to bomb elementary schools in Iran. READ MORE