Survey: 99% of CEOs expect AI-driven job cuts within two years

This survey crystallizes something many workers have sensed anecdotally: senior leadership increasingly views AI as a headcount lever, not just a productivity tool. When 99% of executives expect AI‑driven job cuts, it signals that organizations are planning structural redesigns around automation rather than treating AI as a marginal add‑on. That mindset will shape which AI projects get funded—workflows that directly replace roles are more likely to get greenlit than tools that quietly augment staff.

From an AGI‑race perspective, the near‑term effect is to pull more capital and organizational attention into deploying existing systems at scale. Companies are unlikely to wait for frontier‑level generality when they can already automate narrow but valuable slices of work. That pressure to show rapid ROI can, paradoxically, both accelerate model adoption and hollow out the middle layers of organizations that historically provided operational resilience and ethical friction.

Longer term, this kind of survey also affects public legitimacy. If AI becomes synonymous with layoffs, political support for aggressive scaling could erode, especially in democracies where dislocation shows up quickly at the ballot box. Labs and hyperscalers that want room to build frontier systems will need more convincing stories—and evidence—about how gains are shared.