Claims that artificial intelligence (AI) will displace programmers and trigger a wave of IT layoffs are not borne out by practice, InfoWatch president and chairman of the board of the Domestic Software association Natalya Kasperskaya said in an interview with TASS.
According to her, relying on full replacement of humans by machines in development is simply inefficient. However, her optimistic forecast contrasts with fresh data from the US labor market, where AI has already become a key driver of record layoffs.
Kasperskaya stated that mass layoffs in programming due to AI replacing humans will not happen. The main argument is economic: such an approach is inefficient. The introduction of AI in various areas shows that the number of people in these roles is not decreasing; only their roles are changing.
Instead of staff reductions, there is a redistribution of functions. Programmers are increasingly writing code manually less often and managing AI more: setting tasks, breaking them down, and checking results. Professions, in Kasperskaya's words, are "mutating" under the influence of AI, but not disappearing.
She attributes the sustained demand for specialists to the limitations of generative AI, which can produce hallucinations—erroneous results. Since AI can produce questionable output, humans must oversee it. Therefore, a belt of specialists engaged in management and quality control is forming around the technology.
Data from the US labor market looks more alarming. According to calculations by consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, in May 2026 alone, AI caused 38,579 layoffs in the US—a record monthly figure since tracking began in 2023 and 40% of all job cuts that month. Since the start of 2026, 87,714 people have lost their jobs due to AI, already exceeding the total for all of 2025 (54,836).
The pressure has extended beyond Big Tech: fintech companies and banks, including Standard Chartered and Coinbase, have announced layoffs. Moreover, not only rank-and-file employees are affected. Citadel hedge fund CEO Ken Griffin acknowledged that agentic AI is already replacing highly qualified experts with master's and doctoral degrees, doing in hours work that previously took weeks.
However, Kasperskaya's thesis also finds support in the West. Some experts, including David George of Andreessen Horowitz and economist Tyler Cowen, call talk of the imminent disappearance of professions a myth. a16z research also finds no evidence that AI leads to mass job losses: changes are concentrated on individual tasks, not entire professions.