The AI Layoff Bill Is Coming Due, and CTOs Are Going to Pay It Twice

cdrnsf 13 points 2 comments May 14, 2026
www.forbes.com · View on Hacker News

Discussion Highlights (2 comments)

CodingJeebus

It's like the "human code review has become the bottleneck" problem, scaled out to all operations that AI winds up touching. I've shared before about hiring a local plumber for a remodelling job who replaced their office assistant with a voice AI that could not understand my address (which was not complicated). I rage-quit that call and found another plumber by the end of the week. It took the first plumber 3 weeks to check his AI call log to find out that he lost a 5 figure job, reaching out to apologize and see what he could do to earn my trust. In that time, I got another quote for substantially less and was already getting the work done. That's my experience with small business AI solutions, truly terrible experience and I had zero sympathy for the first guy. If I'm paying you all that money to come mess with my plumbing, I want a human on the other end I can talk if something goes sideways.

xvxvx

I sincerely hope many, if not most, of these companies go under due to their gambling on AI at the expense of their workforce. I also look forward to Storage Wars: Data Centers with people buying a thousand unused hard drives for $10. Then the inevitable ‘we flipped this data center and made condos’ show on HGTV.

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