It’s understandable that people blame AI for economic issues when so may CEOs are publicly stating that “increased efficiencies due to AI” is the reason for laying off staff.

They blamed the latest fad for layoffs in the last one as well.

Every company and project I know of has a long list of things they want to do that they believe would be good for customers - but they cannot afford the people needed, and the risk is too high to borrow. That is if AI was really increasing efficiency in a good economy they would be keeping everyone and getting more work done with them.

Of course in reality we cannot know if AI has really increased efficiency - we only have short term measures at best which we know from experience are often wrong. (most often because there are many ways you can make a shortcut today that will kill your long term)