An Ancient Explanation For A Modern Reality
Credit YouTube
Three stories crossed my desk this month, and together they describe a pattern worth naming.
Betsy Tong compared how Accenture and KPMG treated their people as both companies pivoted to AI. Accenture's CEO judged more than 11,000 employees "untrainable" and paid roughly $865 million in severance to let them go. KPMG sent nearly 1,000 junior auditors to its $450 million Orlando training campus instead, retooling the role around the judgment work AI still cannot do, for a fraction of what Accenture spent on layoffs.
Quartz reported that Ford, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, and IBM are quietly rehiring workers they let go once automated systems could not finish what the humans used to do.
In May, Standard Chartered CEO Bill Winters apologized publicly after describing employees whose jobs are at risk of automation as "lower value human capital."
What the Articles Show
Each story is different, but the pattern underneath them is not. It is the slow dehumanization of the workforce, measured against a technology that is easier to quantify than judgment ever was. AI did not invent this instinct. It has simply given leaders a new, precise-looking number to hide behind.
The rehiring pattern is not a rumor. Robert Half data cited by CNBC found that nearly one in three U.S. hiring managers who eliminated a role because of AI later brought someone back into that role or a similar one. At IBM, an AI system built to handle human resources requests managed roughly 94 percent of the volume, but the remaining six percent, the cases involving ethical judgment, exposed the limit of full automation. The company responded by announcing plans to triple its entry-level hiring in the United States.
The trend is bigger than any single company. Tech firms cut roughly 142,000 jobs in 2026 even as four of the largest companies committed a combined $700 billion to AI infrastructure. A recent Atlanta Fed survey found that roughly 90 percent of executives say AI has not yet boosted productivity at their own companies. Even the people making these decisions are not entirely sure the numbers justify them.
Plato's Cave
I do not believe most leaders are making these choices with malicious intent. I believe they have fallen into a trap that Plato described twenty-four centuries ago.
Plato described a cave with prisoners bound so they can only see the back wall. A fire burns behind them, and people carry objects in front of the fire. The prisoners see only the shadows those objects cast, flat and two-dimensional, and the shadows are all they have ever known. When one prisoner is finally freed and shown the real objects, he does not celebrate. He resists, because what he sees does not match what he has always believed to be true.
Today, instead of shadows on a cave wall, we have dashboards on monitors. The numbers are two-dimensional representations of thousands of human decisions and judgments made across an organization. They are historical since it takes weeks or months for an activity to work its way into a spreadsheet. And they show only the result of the work, not the human effort and judgment that produced it.
Many senior leaders rarely leave the version of the cave built for them. They eat in executive dining rooms rather than employee cafeterias. They fly first class or on the company plane rather than in a middle seat at the back of coach. None of this makes them villains, but it makes the trap easy to fall into, because the wall in front of them is the only wall they see.
The trap has two parts. The first is failing to look past the numbers to the people who produced them. The second is assuming the wall that cannot be moved, instead of a door that can be opened.
The numbers deserve even less blind trust than leaders give them. Researchers at Princeton and the University of Chicago recently ran several AI models through a hiring simulation. They found the models formed stereotypes about job candidates more readily than the human participants did. The lesson is not that AI should be discarded. It is that the judgment AI is replacing was doing more work than the metrics give credit for.
Leave the Cave
The trap is also easy to escape. All it takes is looking up from the dashboard and:
Asking questions. Look beyond the numbers. Identify the drivers of the results.
Understanding assumptions and challenging them. A good assumption today can be a bad assumption tomorrow because of changes in the world around you.
Being fully present. Focus on being fully engaged. Dashboards, even well-prepared ones, can lull us into a false sense of security.
Getting this right is not only a matter of morale, though morale matters more than most spreadsheets admit. Executives who treat this moment as a straightforward cost exercise, trimming whatever the numbers say is expendable, are not leading. They abandon their judgment and take orders from the machines.
Shadows are not real, mere reflections of the world; look up to see truth.
Related Articles
A Tale of Two Companies: Accenture's Layoffs vs. KPMG's Retraining | Betsy Tong, LinkedIn
Layoffs Tied to AI Hurt Worker Productivity, and the Reason May Surprise Managers | The Conversation
'Boomerang' Hires Suggest AI Layoffs Aren't Sticking | Axios
Companies Rehire Workers Laid Off for AI as Automation Falls Short | Quartz
AI Layoffs: Companies That Fired Workers Now Want Them Back | Forbes
Standard Chartered CEO Apologizes for 'Lower Value Human Capital' Remark | Fortune
Big Tech's Layoffs Aren't About Money. They're About Control. | Medium
When the Most Profitable Companies Lay Off Employees | COTE 100
March 2026 Tech Layoffs: Why Profitable Companies Are Cutting Jobs | ResumeHog
America Isn't Ready for What AI Will Do to Jobs | The Atlantic
AI Is More Likely Than Humans to Form Biases When Hiring | MIT Technology Review
Share of Workers Over 55 Is Only Increasing, Study Shows | HR Dive
Ageism Forcing Some Women to Consider Revamping Their Resumes | NBC News
Workplace Ageism Is Hurting Employees and Businesses Alike | Forbes
Major U.S. Firms Spent $600 Million on Perks for Executives | Fast Company
Plato's Cave and the Stubborn Persistence of Ignorance | MIT Press Reader
Corporate Diplomacy and Stakeholder Value in Modern Business | LinkedIn (Mark Rapier)
Chips And Salsa: Bite-Sized News and Posts
First impressions form in the blink of an eye. Before you ever say a word, people are judging you.
12 Things People Judge About You Before You Even Speak | Yahoo Lifestyle
If it is in the cloud, assume it will be compromised. Take proactive steps to secure your data. Trust but verify.
Private Claude Chats Exposed in Google and Bing Search Results | Wired
The sad thing about this is that Mr. Boseman knew he was very sick and took no steps to prevent this family feud.
These are the types of things that will determine what happens in 2040.
Ten Advances in Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science | OpenAI
Your career is yours to manage. Often, the best opportunities are outside our current firm. Many times they find you when you are not looking.
Job-Changers Are Seeing Their Highest Wage Increases in Nearly a Year | Marketplace
I always marvel at great movies. The story, the acting, cinematography, and direction combine to create something amazing.
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The science behind Marie Kondo.
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Regardless of which projection you choose to rely on, quantum computing is fast approaching. Be ready.
IBM's CEO on When Quantum Computing Will Impact the Bottom Line | Yahoo Finance
Quantum Computing: An Inflection Point We Can See Coming | LinkedIn (Mark Rapier)
We draw before we write. We sing before we talk. Art opens the mind.
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What does it mean to be a star?
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I've never had a sidekick. I guess I shop at the wrong stores.
10 Best Far Side Comics About Cowboys and the West | CBR
Quotes
"You never get a second chance to make a first impression."
Will Rogers
"Anytime you have change, it costs somebody. Somebody is a loser."
Robert Shiller
"Everyone has the talent to succeed. But do you have the guts to fail?"
Denzel Washington
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Leadership is the most important work we do—in business and in life. I've spent over 40 years working with leaders across more than 100 companies, and I'm still learning. These newsletters share my thoughts on leadership today and what we can learn.
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