I do not buy the “everything will be AI” bit, but this is 100% about the money (which, to be clear, is also power). Employees are forced to think short term just to survive, but (smart) companies think much, much longer. They look at “+$xx million/year” and they see that times an indeterminate amount of years into the future. On those time scales, losing $500m once to stop it is a bargain to them.
The thing is, they lost a tonne of money during the COVID lockdowns, then after one decent recovery year in 2022 they lost even more from the 2023 flops, and now they’re losing money from the strike. After a while it starts to add up.
I do not buy the “everything will be AI” bit, but this is 100% about the money (which, to be clear, is also power). Employees are forced to think short term just to survive, but (smart) companies think much, much longer. They look at “+$xx million/year” and they see that times an indeterminate amount of years into the future. On those time scales, losing $500m once to stop it is a bargain to them.
The thing is, they lost a tonne of money during the COVID lockdowns, then after one decent recovery year in 2022 they lost even more from the 2023 flops, and now they’re losing money from the strike. After a while it starts to add up.