AI Is for Velocity, Not Layoffs

The great AI layoff of 2026 is quietly becoming the great AI rehire. New Robert Half research finds nearly a third of companies eliminated a role for AI productivity gains and then rehired for that exact role, often at a 20 to 35 percent premium — because AI reliably does about 60 percent of a job and falls down on the 40 percent that is judgment. Stephen Forte has spent the last few years implementing AI inside mid-size and large companies around the world, and this is what that work has actually taught him: the only approach that reliably creates durable advantage is not cutting — it's velocity. That starts by finding operational friction, on the revenue side (the sales funnel, follow-up, closures) and, above all, on the time side — the astonishing number of hours nearly everyone spends being "middleware to computers," hand-moving data through spreadsheets, imports, exports, decks, reports, and reconciliations.Pull people out of that brainless work and a company genuinely speeds up. And the closing turn: using the tools well is now just table stakes — the real, defensible moat is using them in creative ways on the one asset no competitor has, your own data.