Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council, on Monday dismissed the negative impact of artificial intelligence on jobs, saying emerging technologies will not displace anyone’s jobs at this point.
“There’s no indication in the data right now that AI is taking anyone’s job, but we’re studying the future of AI and what it means for the workforce, and we have a large task force on that,” Hassett said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
Hassett’s comments come amid a wave of layoffs by technology companies. Amazon, meta and oracle Some companies have announced layoffs, and some are emphasizing the role of AI in automating tasks and increasing productivity through reduced headcount.
block announced in February that it would lay off about 4,000 employees, cutting its workforce by almost half.
“As our business accelerates, we are choosing to change the way we operate, and we see an opportunity to move faster with smaller, better teams to leverage AI to automate more work,” Block CFO Amrita Ahuja said in the announcement.
atlassiancut 1,600 jobs in March to “self-fund further investments in AI and enterprise sales while strengthening our financial profile,” CEO Mike Cannon-Brooks said in a blog post.
Last week, both Coinbase and Cloudflare also announced AI-related layoffs, reducing their headcount by 14% and 20%, respectively.
Coinbase “Over the past year, we’ve seen engineers leverage AI to ship work in days that previously took teams weeks,” CEO Brian Armstrong said in a May 5 announcement. “Now, non-technical teams can ship production code in days. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said in a May 5 announcement, detailing the current market pressures for cryptocurrencies and how AI is “changing the way we work.”
In a post announcing the 1,100 layoffs, Cloudflare said agent AI has “fundamentally changed” the way it works and that it is “rethinking every process, team, and role within the company.”
“We are our most demanding customers. Cloudflare’s AI usage has increased by over 600% in the past three months alone,” the post reads. “Employees across the company, from engineering to human resources to finance to marketing, run thousands of AI agent sessions every day to get their jobs done.”
Hassett told CNBC that companies that implement AI “tend to see rapid revenue growth and even employment growth, while companies that don’t do that are a little bit behind.”
The White House did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for additional comment.
