Dropbox is cutting hundreds of jobs, citing the “era of AI” as the reason

Cloud storage provider Dropbox has announced major layoffs, which the company doesn’t just attribute to deteriorating global demand. “The beginning of the AI ​​age” should also be a reason, as Dropbox apparently wants to replace some of the employees with “artificial intelligence”.

Like Dropbox boss and co-founder Drew Houston yesterday in a message to employees announced that hundreds of jobs are to be cut in the short term. A total of 500 previous Dropbox employees are said to lose their jobs, with the layoffs having been pronounced over the course of yesterday. Today is already the last working day at Dropbox for those affected.

Company founder Houston sees job cuts as preparation for “AI age”

As a reason for these job cuts, which by the way are by no means unusual in their short-term nature for the USA, Houston cites the fact that the hitherto quite strong growth of the Dropbox company has slowed down. Dropbox, for example, works quite profitably and recently reported strong figures, but the market has now reached a certain level of saturation.

Houston said the layoffs were a sort of precautionary move and that it wants to invest in new areas to keep up with changing market conditions. At the same time, some expenses are being cut that have always brought in good money, but for which customers are no longer willing to pay due to the worsening global economic situation.

Of even greater importance, Houston continued in his statement on the layoffs, “is that the AI ​​age of computing has finally arrived.” Dropbox has believed for many years that artificial intelligence would “give us new superpowers and completely transform knowledge work.” The company has therefore been “working towards this future” for a long time, as will be shown by the new Dropbox products planned for 2023, Houston continued.

Houston’s completely uninhibited manner, with the laying off of hundreds of employees – more precisely 16 percent of the entire workforce of the company he founded – should fully meet the fears of critics of the unchecked adoption of AI technologies in more and more areas. Apparently, he makes no secret of the fact that he simply throws employees who frequently take on recurring tasks out the door to replace their jobs with AI systems.

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