“Vedomosti”: AI boomerang forced business to return reduced employees

Businesses around the world have begun to see the ghosts of last year's cuts. Organizations that believed in the power of AI and said goodbye to employees are now hiring them back. The reason was called by the Associated Press: neural networks failed where critical thinking, creativity, teamwork and knowledge of the internal processes of the company are needed. “Vedomosti” collected examples of corporations that received this “AI-boomerang”.

Swedish fintech in 2024 put neural networks in charge of support. The OpenAI-based AI assistant closed 2.3 million calls in the first month, about two-thirds of customer requests in 23 markets and 35 languages. The company counted: the bot pulls the work of 700 full-time employees. Hiring froze for more than a year, staff shrank by 22%, saving about $40 million.

Typical queries bot really understood. But complex cases beat the rating of customer satisfaction. In 2025, Klarna again began to gain support, and a year later, CEO Sebastian Siemyatkovsky admitted that the company traded quality for savings and returned to a hybrid scheme – AI left the routine, and people were entrusted with difficult situations.

Jim Farley has promised that AI will “replace literally half of all office workers in the United States.” In parallel, the company set an anti-record for car reviews for safety reasons: from cracks in fuel injectors to suddenly stalled engines. Warranty repairs in 2023 ate $4.8 billion - three times the industry average.

In 2026, Ford returned about 350 experienced engineers, catching defects before putting the part on the conveyor. AI has not been abandoned, but it has changed its role: 100,000 automated tests have been launched for obvious security problems. By June, the corporation jumped from 10th to 3rd place in the quality rating of new cars Initial Quality Study, missing only Porsche and Genesis.

In July 2025, the Australian bank fired 45 customer support operators – their work was given to an AI bot that was supposed to receive calls, recognize the essence of appeals and automate typical questions. The calculation was based on reducing the load on call centers.

It didn't. Appeals not only did not fall, but climbed upwards – this was noticed by both employees and the trade union. In August, the bank rolled back the decision, admitting that it had not fully assessed the situation. Dismissed persons were asked to return or apply for voluntary dismissal.

The e-commerce giant cleared the staff for automation: October 28, 2025 - minus 14,000 employees, January 28, 2026 - about 16,000 more. The official wording is to improve management efficiency and accelerate the development of new technologies. No one closed the vacancies for specialists in cloud computing, machine learning and AI agents: these areas are the heart of Amazon Web Services.

In September 2026, it was revealed that the corporation was calling back former employees, including those who had been fired. AWS recruiters have launched a program called Boomerang with a shortened interview procedure.

The cloud-based CRM system gave customer service to AI agents. In 2025, CEO Mark Benioff reported that the support staff was reduced from 9,000 to 5,000 people, and the neural network itself answers questions about products and conducts standard operations. The flagship was the Agentforce line, sold as a way for Salesforce customers to do the same at home.

Payback came quickly: the company lost accumulated internal knowledge, and the trust of employees and customers sank. Now the management wants to bring back the fired and honestly admitted that they overestimated the AI and underestimated their own staff.

In 2023, the corporation removed about 7,800 positions - mainly in HR, technical support and administrative units. CEO Arvind Krishna explained that the processing of personnel requests, vacations, documentation and salary transactions will be taken over by AI. About 94% of routine processes are automated.

But IBM’s overall workforce didn’t just rebound — it outgrew it. Krishna explained in a May 2025 interview with The Wall Street Journal that the company had invested its resources in other areas. A number of programmers, sales and marketing specialists have grown, those whom neural networks cannot yet replace.

Jack Dorsey’s fintech company, behind Cash App, Square and Bitkey, cut more than 4,000 employees in February 2026, about 40% of its workforce. It’s about AI and automation, Dorsey said, with smaller teams now doing more work. There were no financial reasons - Block's gross profit for 2025 amounted to $10.36 billion, an increase of 17%.

However, a few weeks later, it turned out that the company had already returned at least four former employees, including the engineering department and recruiting.

In January 2023, Google’s parent company said goodbye to approximately 12,000 employees around the world as part of a review of priorities and cost optimization.

Already in 2025, the corporation massively summoned the former back, primarily to the AI divisions. According to CNBC, one in five AI software engineers she hired had previously worked for Google. The benefits are obvious: vacancies close faster, and a person does not need to delve into the internal processes of the corporation.