Though my sample size is small, these stories fit my thesis that the real AI jobs crisis is that the drumbeat, marketing, and pop culture of "powerful AI” encourages and permits management to replace or degrade jobs they might not otherwise have. More important than the technological change, perhaps, is the change in a social permission structure.

Agreed. If a company says “we’ve automated this job and it’s now done by AI,” they mean “we’ve decided to take advantage of media trends by dramatically lowering the quality and reliability of our processes, consistent with our policy of doing things as cheaply as our customers will tolerate.”