A Nvidia executive told Axios that his team's AI compute costs currently exceed the salaries of human employees doing similar work—a finding backed by a 2024 MIT study showing AI remains economically unviable in 77% of job categories. Despite this, major tech firms are laying off thousands while spending $740 billion on AI infrastructure this year, a 69% increase from 2025, because they're betting on future cost reductions and reliability improvements rather than immediate labor savings. The article notes that AI inference costs are expected to drop over 90% in the next four years according to Gartner, but companies will need to prove AI is both cheaper and more reliable at scale before the economic math shifts in AI's favor.