Peter Thiel warned that AI would get “the math people before the word people.” Banks have already stated that a smaller number of employees is possible

The recent string of layoff announcements has stoked fears of an AI-powered jobs apocalypse, although the sectors seeing big losses echo an earlier warning from tech billionaire Peter Thiel.

“It seems to be a lot worse for the mathematicians than for the word people,” he said in a recently resurfaced clip from a 2024 interview.

He added that even in STEM fields not currently affected by AI automation, such as medical care, math skills will be less relevant as a barrier to entry.

“If you want to study medicine, we weed people out through physics and calculus,” he said, adding, “I don’t really want someone who is operating on my brain doing prime number factorization in their head while they’re operating on my brain.”

Let’s rewind to last month, when fintech company Block announced a 40% reduction in its workforce, or around 4,000 positions, citing AI models as the main reason.

Meanwhile, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said AI allows the company to “…