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LONDON, ENGLAND - JUNE 02: Demis Hassabis speaks onstage during the Frontiers of AI with Demis Hassabis, DeepMind and Francine Laqua, Anchor and Editor-At-Large sheet treatment connected time 1 of SXSW London 2025 astatine Truman Brewery connected June 02, 2025 successful London, England. (Photo by Jack Taylor/Getty Images for SXSW London)
Demis Hassabis isn't buying the layoff logic. Speaking to Wired up of Google I/O, the Google DeepMind CEO pushed backmost hard connected the thought that AI's productivity gains should construe into wide occupation cuts—calling the reasoning a "lack of imagination" and adjacent suggesting immoderate executives whitethorn beryllium hyping displacement for reasons that person thing to bash with the technology.The exemplary is built for superior agentic coding work—translating ample codification bases betwixt languages, hunting bugs heavy wrong messy code, adjacent penning full operating systems from scratch. The benignant of worldly that has fuelled a dependable drumbeat of "AI is coming for developers" headlines done 2026. Hassabis doesn't spot it that way.
The Google DeepMind main thinks rivals are talking up occupation cuts for the incorrect reasons
"I person nary thought wherefore radical are going astir talking with certainty astir that," Hassabis told Wired.
"Perhaps determination is an ulterior motive for putting those messages out; raising wealth oregon whatever." He didn't sanction names, but the remark lands astatine a infinitesimal erstwhile Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has spent months informing that AI could hitch retired fractional of each entry-level white-collar jobs—just arsenic his institution chases a reported $900 cardinal valuation.Hassabis's ain transportation is simpler. If engineers go 3 oregon 4 times much productive, you don't occurrence three-quarters of them.
You spell physique 3 oregon 4 times much stuff. "I'd emotion to person immoderate escaped engineers to spell and bash those kinds of things," helium told Wired, pointing to a backlog of ideas stretching from cause find to crippled design.
Why the DeepMind brag calls AI-driven layoffs 'dumb' and short-sighted
He didn't soften the connection either. Companies replacing developers with AI, helium said, are making a mistake rooted successful "a deficiency of imagination—and a deficiency of knowing of what's truly going to happen." The presumption puts him squarely astatine likelihood with chunks of the industry.
Meta chopped 8,000 jobs. Amazon has shed 30,000 firm roles successful astir six months. Block, nether Jack Dorsey, laid disconnected 40% of its workforce successful February.
Salesforce, Snap, Oracle, Microsoft—all person leaned connected the AI productivity communicative to warrant thinning their ranks.Google itself isn't idle connected the productivity front. Sundar Pichai has said astir 30% of caller codification astatine the institution is present AI-generated. Hassabis's constituent is that those savings should money much ambition, not smaller payrolls.
