Look at it from the companies' point of view:

- Human contact is more important than efficiency gains, hence mandating return-to-office.

- At the same time, efficiency gains are more important than human contact, hence reducing human headcount in favor of increased AI use.

If you read between the lines, you can see how those two points are related: humans find difficult to feel connected when their communication partner is just pixels on a screen, so that's why remote workers are being replaced with AI.