Box founder Aaron Levie recently said something the tech world needed to hear. According to TechCrunch's Equity podcast, executives deciding that AI can replace jobs often don't understand what those jobs actually involve. Levie calls this "AI psychosis."
The context makes the comment sharper. ClickUp just cut 22% of its workforce citing AI agents. Tech layoffs in 2026 are already nearly matching the entire year of 2025.
And users are moving. DuckDuckGo installs are climbing 30% as people abandon Google's AI-heavy search results. They want links.
The Equity podcast crew—Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane—explore the paradox: the AI-pilled and the AI-skeptical are both right. Executives don't understand the roles they're eliminating, yet the pressure to deploy AI is real.
Levie's "AI psychosis" comment has circulated on social media. The consensus: executives need to understand jobs before automating them.
How many more companies will pursue aggressive AI deployment before the pressure eases? Enough to drive users toward privacy-focused search engines.
