It's about internal power, even at the expense of the companies wellbeing. These layoffs were in the context of a larger set of layoffs that Satya undertook as his first big move at MS. Satya was getting across the board pushback from lots of different warring orgs at MS. He even had to bring the Big G out of retirement to help him out. So by taking out the top dogs he becomes the top dog. I don't even blame Satya for doing it - it's human nature that required it. If he didn't do it he would have eventually been pushed out of MS for not getting anything done. It's why drug cartels are so violent, it's why our election choices are Clinton and Trump. At least he's less evil than Sinofsky and Ballmer who were both cartoonishly horrible.

Good people have been leaving MS for a very long time. But big company corporate politics are really toxic in the US. MS is actually one of the better ones. Intel, Amazon, Netflix are much worse. Facebook and Google are on the decline. Yahoo.... yeah

As for this AI thing, my bet is that it is mostly fluff. Most people will ignore it until the next re-org comes along. There was a similar thing with Big Data at MSR a number of years ago and look what happened there.

You think you are better than the ML group? No? See I've just fired all of them. Don't think for a second I won't fire your ass on a whim. Now get to work.

Something like that.