Something interesting happened in corporate communications this year. The word "efficiency" disappeared from layoff announcements. So did "over-hiring" and "too many management layers." In their place: artificial intelligence.

Mark Zuckerberg declared 2026 the year AI "dramatically changes the way we work." Then Meta fired 700 people in a single week. Amazon pointed to AI. Pinterest pointed to AI. Atlassian pointed to AI.

And then Jack Dorsey said the quiet part out loud. Block, his fintech company, announced it would cut nearly half its workforce. "Intelligence tools have changed what it means to build and run a company," he told shareholders. He expects a "majority of companies" to reach the same conclusion within a year. "I wanted to get ahead of it."

Now, I'll be the first to say: AI is genuinely changing how software gets built. Some startups report 25% to 75% AI-generated code. That's real. Developer productivity is measurably increasing. The efficiency gains are not fiction.

But here's where the story gets dishonest. Tech investor Terrence Rohan, who's sat on plenty of company boards, put it perfectly: "Pointing to AI makes a better blog post. Or it at least doesn't make you seem as much the bad guy who just wants to cut people for cost-effectiveness."

That's the game. AI is the greatest corporate excuse machine ever invented. It simultaneously justifies the layoffs ("we don't need those people anymore"), excites investors ("we're an AI-first company now"), and deflects blame from executives who over-hired during the pandemic and are now scrambling to fix their balance sheets.

Jack Dorsey has presided over at least two rounds of mass cuts in two years. He never mentioned AI until this one. Meta has been doing annual layoffs since 2022. The reasons keep changing; the pattern doesn't.

Anne Hoecker, a partner at Bain who leads their tech practice, offered the most balanced take: "Some of it is that the narrative is changing, some of it is that we really are starting to see step changes in productivity." Both things can be true simultaneously.

But the ratio matters. If AI is responsible for 20% of the productivity gain and "we need to hit our earnings target" is responsible for the other 80%, calling it an "AI transformation" is PR, not strategy.

Here's what to watch: the companies that are genuinely restructuring around AI will be hiring AI engineers at roughly the same rate they're cutting other roles. The ones that are just using AI as cover will see headcount drop with no corresponding reallocation. Check back in six months. The receipts will tell the real story.

First reported by the BBC.