Google is HIRING Humans... AGAIN

Picture Credit: by Observer

When ChatGPT launched in late 2022, the pitch was irresistible: artificial intelligence could do the work of entire teams, in minutes, for a fraction of the cost. Companies believed it. They adopted AI exponentially,` embedding it into customer service, software development, marketing, and operations. The efficiency gains were real. So were the layoffs. Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, Salesforce, and dozens of others cut tens of thousands of jobs. Even fast food chains began replacing drive-thru workers with AI voice systems. The automation wave was arriving faster than anyone had predicted.

Then the bills came due.

In recent months, a quiet crisis has been building inside the world's biggest technology companies. AI, it turns out, is not cheap at scale. The computational power required to run advanced models continuously, across millions of users, integrated into live business systems, is consuming budgets at a rate that is becoming impossible for executives to justify.

Microsoft, one of the largest investors in AI infrastructure on earth, banned its own employees from using Claude Code due to spiralling costs. Uber, Nvidia, Amazon, and hundreds of other firms have reported similar problems. Several major corporations have already exhausted their annual AI budgets before the year is half over.

"Using open cloud these days is like driving a Ferrari," one senior technology executive said. The cost-per-output that once made AI compelling has shifted dramatically as usage scales.

Picture Credit: by WSJ

The irony is sharp. AI displaced workers because it was cheaper. Now it costs more than the workers it replaced, without the option of simply switching it off without dismantling the business processes built around it.

Anthropic, the AI company behind Claude, has itself raised alarms about AI's broader employment impact. The disruption, it warned, is only beginning.

The companies that moved fastest to automate are now trapped between the workforce they eliminated and the technology bills they cannot afford.