AI adoption is happening and tech employees are paying the price
Recent layoffs at Sightful and Lightricks are part of a larger industry shift towards AI. Tech companies need to prepare for the inevitable changes AI will bring.
The start-up Sightful laid off 20 employees this week, a third of its workforce, while the unicorn Lightricks eliminated about 70 jobs, around a tenth of its staff. The two companies, unrelated to each other, described the reductions as a "business focus" – a sanitized term for the harsh reality many in the high-tech industry are currently facing.
Full list of Israeli high-tech layoffs in 2024
It's not just the state of the general industry or the ongoing war; it's artificial intelligence, which has transitioned from theoretical to practical. After numerous predictions, experiments, articles, and analyses, AI is now operational, used by more and more managers, integrated with more and more tools, and eliminating a lot of development roles—and developers.
Verbit, the unicorn specializing in legal summaries and translations, suffered the first dramatic blow in Israel, but it won't be the last, and this week's layoffs are just the beginning. "Business focus" is necessary for every company, but it is better to address the problem directly so that other companies understand what reality they are heading towards.
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There is a good chance that such "focusing" is merely postponing the inevitable. Quite a few software companies will soon be forced to admit that their technology is not deep enough, and artificial intelligence can replace it. They, and their employees, should start preparing for this.
