Many firms are now slashing their number of new hires.

Yes. This sucks.

The main cause of this is artificial intelligence

Unlikely.

The main cause for a chill in hiring tends to be uncertainty about the future. And we know that folks are feeling high uncertainty about the future, right now. (Gestures broadly at current headlines in general and "Not The Onion", in particular.)

Historically, uncertainty about the future is particularly high when the people have low confidence that existing and new laws will be applied in a predictable manner.

I'll leave exactly what changed on that front as a thought exercise.

AI is interesting, but it is not the primary cause of the chill in hiring new graduates.

just need to change your name to "AI" and suddenly every company will want you

More lifehacks next time

Remember the meme about everyone could have a 32 hour work week and three-day weekends (and a productivity boost) but the billionaires are opposed?

Well everyone could have post-scarcity communism but the billionaires are opposed.

Who could have seen this coming!

The idea of a world driven by robots empowered by AI methods, is really great. It gives freedom to everyone with almost no costs. Just doesn't work so well with a capitalistic society as the one we currently have.

Such uses demand a non-capitalistic socio-economic system. Like some form of communism.

Unpopular opinion: Younger hires are garbage workers. Entitled. Cannot accept criticism. Quit the moment things get too hard. Incompetent. Argumentative with supervisors. On phones too much. And late all of the damned time.

Now add shitty workers with CEO’s cutting billionaires and AI and yep, job market sucks.

graduating is not daunting. not by any stretch. in fact, that's the point where life peaks. everything after is a steep downhill ride.

yes, ai adoption has turned that downhill run into a cliff. but if someone thinks graduation is even remotely daunting, then they would struggle even in the most non-ai of worlds.