On Jan. 20, tech giant Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG)(NASDAQ: GOOGL), Google's parent company, made headlines because it laid off 12,000 of its employees, which was roughly 6% of its workforce.

Many investors were aware of the news and are discussing the implications. However, there's one tiny detail in the news that I believe is worth deeper discussion as it relates to Alphabet's layoffs. That detail is the recent surge of the artificial intelligence (AI) trend.

Many investors focused on the size of Alphabet's layoffs. Others focused on CEO Sundar Pichai when he said, "I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us here." But for me, what stood out was Pichai's comments about AI. In his blog post discussing the layoffs, AI was mentioned three times -- odd, considering those mentions didn't directly relate to the layoffs.

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Source Fool.com