Companies around the world are increasingly citing artificial intelligence when slashing jobs , fueling anxiety that a lot more workers may lose their livelihoods to machines. Microsoft , Barclays Bank and supermarket chain Kroger are among the latest entries on a growing list of companies that have announced AI -related workforce reductions this year, including the elimination of jobs deemed redundant or shed to free up money for investing in the technology. But the job cuts of the AI era, which are affecting tens of thousands of people, occasionally have an epilogue. Some companies, after discovering that AI models, applications and agents don’t perform as well as expected, end up rehiring laid-off workers to fill eliminated positions. -based technology company that develops employment-related tests and tools. Hiring managers in fields including finance, marketing , law and health reported earlier this year that their companies had eliminated positions primarily because of AI or automation, only to hire again for the same or similar roles, according to recruitment and staffing firm Robert Half. The most frequently cited reasons for restoring dropped jobs included the technology needing more human oversight than anticipated and its inability to replicate institutional knowledge, the firm said. “When you need critical thinking, collaboration, creativity, institutional knowledge, those are things that AI just can’t replicate,” Bill Driscoll, a senior district president at Robert Half, said. '” Klarna, the Swedish provider of buy now, pay later services, began recruiting human customer service representatives again last year. CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski acknowledged in an interview with Bloomberg News that the company’s reliance on an AI chatbot to cut costs had gone too far.