Nvidia executive says right now AI is more expensive than paying human workers
cutting-edge layoffs At first, it might seem to indicate that a major labor shift from human workers to artificial intelligence may already be taking place.
Meta It announced in a statement last week that it planned to lay off 10% of its workforce, or about 8,000 employees, and also scrap hiring plans for 6,000 open positions. This is part of an effort to “manage the company more efficiently and allow us to balance other investments we have made,” according to the statement. Microsoft made the largest voluntary buyout offer the company has ever made to thousands of employees.
But other technology headlines currently show that AI is not saving companies labor; In fact, it costs them more than the people they currently employ.
“The cost of computing for my team far exceeds the costs of employees,” said Bryan Catanzaro, vice president of applied deep learning. NvidiaLately said axios.
A MYTH to work Supports Catanzaro’s experience from 2024. Analyzing the technical requirements for AI models needed to perform tasks at a human level, researchers found that AI automation would be economically viable in only 23% of roles where vision is a primary part of the job. The other 77% of the time, it was cheaper for people to keep their jobs.
In other cases, the AI has been proven wrong, as an engineer told an AI agent. destroyed the database and the network as a result of what he calls “overuse.”
On the contrary no clear evidence Artificial intelligence boosts productivity and, according to the Yale Budget Lab, no widespread data To support the idea of AI replacing jobs, Big Tech companies have continued to pour money into AI, $740 billion in capital expenditure announced so far this year Morgan StanleyA 69% increase from 2025. The sheer magnitude of spending has caused some companies to completely rethink their budgets.
“I went back to the drawing board because the budget I thought I would need has already blown away,” said Uber chief technology officer Praveen Neppalli Naga. said Information Earlier this month, it cited the ride-sharing giant’s push into AI coding tools like Anthropic’s Claude Code.
This increase in spending coincided with an increase in layoffs in the technology sector. According to data from Layoffs.fyi, More than 92,000 layoffs In 2026, it is in about 100 companies in the technology field so far. The rate of these workforce reductions is well above last year’s pace, which saw nearly 120,000 layoffs during the year.
Keith Lee, professor of artificial intelligence and finance at the Swiss Institute of Artificial Intelligence’s Gordon School of Business, said continued AI spending and layoffs despite human labor being cheaper reveal a meaningful inconsistency in the AI economy.
