"Did you know? My mom got laid off!"
Wu Qiong's daughter leaned toward a classmate at kindergarten, eager to share the "news." The child didn't understand the gravity of a layoff. To her, it was simply the latest novelty in her mother's life.
For Wu, the moment carried a painful mix of heartache and dark humor. In April, her employer — a web-development firm that had pivoted to artificial intelligence a year earlier — slashed its workforce. She estimated that more than 60% of employees were laid off, while her 50-person department was eliminated entirely.
Wu had worked as an AI data analyst, tracking client token usage and modeling profit margins. But the company's AI pivot had failed to turn a profit. Rising token costs, fixed client budgets and expanding feature requests squeezed margins.
What troubled her most was not only losing her job, but the way it happened.
At her boss's request, Wu had used AI to automate her own highly repetitive data-reporting work. Once the logic was set, the system ran smoothly without human keystrokes. In building the automation, Wu had helped engineer her own obsolescence.
"I knew AI was developing fast, but I didn't expect it to be this fast," she said.
Concluding that she could not keep pace with the technology, Wu left the AI sector for a job in traditional manufacturing, taking a 30% pay cut. Still, she has no illusions about escaping the shift.
"Now it seems no industry can hide from AI," she said.
Wu's experience reflects a broader transformation: companies aren't just replacing workers with AI — they're compressing roles, raising performance metrics, and rewriting what a single job entails. Across industries, one person doing the work of three has become the norm.