The weird thing is that the AI companies themselves are hiring like there's no tomorrow, doing talent aquisitions etc. Why would you do that if the purpose of your product is to reduce necessary workforce?

Why isn't that the first question that comes to mind for a journalist covering the latest acquisition? It's like an open secret that nobody really talks about.

To answer your questions (I don't think it's what you wanted, but people will scratch their heads after reading them):

On reality, they are hiring because they have a lot of (investment) money. They need a lot of hardware, but they also need people to manage the hardware.

On an alternative reality where their products do what they claim, they would also hire, because people working there would be able to replace lots of people working in other jobs, and so their workers would be way more valuable than the average one, and everybody would want to buy what they create.

Journalists don't care about it because whatever they choose to believe or being paid to "believe", it's the natural way things happen.

Everyone is trying to be the shovel sales person for AI, not the gold diggers buying shovels.

I'm not sure if even the LLM companies themselves are selling shovels yet. I think everyone is racing to find what the shovel of LLMs are.