The premise behind most layoffs is straightforward. Cutting people reduces payroll, payroll is a major expense, and therefore cutting people improves the financial position of the company. On a spreadsheet, in the quarter the decision is made, this logic holds. The difficulty is that the spreadsheet captures only the most visible costs and none of the ones that arrive later.

Accountability is collapsing inside of our organizations, and we are misdiagnosing why. We assume people have stopped caring, when the truth is that we have made caring out loud far too dangerous to be worth it.

The question of whether people matter is not philosophical or abstract. It is practical and urgent, because the answer determines whether AI becomes a tool that enhances human work or a force that diminishes it. Organizations are discovering, often too late, that AI's success or failure depends entirely on whether people feel their contribution still has value.