For hard-hit tech workers, AI is a silver lining

For the thousands of tech workers recently laid off in California and across the country, the future may not be as bleak as it looks right now: Many are likely to retrain fairly quickly for new jobs in the burgeoning field of artificial intelligence.

The massive rounds of layoffs at tech giants and many smaller companies were largely the result of stricter investor demands — what managers saw as over-hiring during the pandemic and a stock market that rewarded those personnel cuts.

But the industry also was clearing the way to focus on AI, which is expected to revolutionize computer-related technology and work in the years ahead — even as it displaces jobs, previously handled by humans, in areas as varied as coding and background acting.

Not only is AI taking over more standard computer programming once done entirely by humans, it is also starting to spur waves of new applications — and with them, jobs, both tech and non-tech, in a wide range of industries, including in Southern California.

“What we’re seeing is a lot of tech companies are actually monetizing the AI solution,” said Jenn Longnion, the Los Angeles-based founder of See & Free Consulting, which helps businesses grow sustainably. “They’ve had AI for a very long time. But they’re finding ways now to monetize that and actually promote that and sell that as a solution to other businesses. ... Every industry is now having those conversations.”

Job postings in the U.S. that specifically mention AI, though still a tiny fraction of all openings, were up by 13% in February from a year ago, even as software development was off more than 30%, according to the employment website Indeed.

Silicon Valley, where most of the AI action is today, figures to lead the way. In February, 9% of companies in the Bay Area said they already use AI, compared with a little more than 5% in the U.S. as a whole, according to the Census Bureau.

The share of Los Angeles-area companies wasn’t significantly higher than the national average, but about 8% of firms in the Southland said they expected to adopt AI in the next six months. In Silicon Beach, which has emerged as a home for companies focusing on AI and augmented reality, firms are hiring for hundreds of AI-related jobs, including content writers and software developers who will train the technology.

Tom Case, a founder at Atticus Growth Partners, a tech recruiting firm in San Francisco, said the proliferation of AI entrepreneurs and startups translates into more jobs. In the last few years, companies have been hiring primarily for research labs, he said, but the industry is beginning to move from AI models to getting them into production.

“We’re in an almost gold rush where everybody’s building an AI company model,” he said. “Very little AI is deployed in production. ... At the moment, it feels like the dawn of job creation.”

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