Thread regarding Intel Corp. layoffs

@h6 Over the past year productivity is rising sharply, with the layoffs everyone can see.

Many are saying that companies are reducing headcount either because they already have AI tools which eliminate the need for so much human intervention, or expect to have those tools in the near future.

Anthropic is said to have 300,000 corporate clients and OpenAI is likely on par. Palantir is known for their defense work but that is only about 50% of their business. Add in Snowflake, ServiceNow, Intapp and other software and services companies focused on AI, and get a sense of the corporate adoption tsunami that is underway.

The new data centers are often the size of Manhattan, and 3000 of them are planned, on top of the existing 12k base, but each of the new datacenters are many, many times larger than the existing datacenters.

The most realistic constraint for having mass unemployment is in energy and materials needed to do even the planned datacenter buildout, and as the hyperscalers pull back from unrealistic/unworkable forecasted builds, that will bring on a major retest in all the infrastructure stocks, starting with NVDA, then MU, TSMC, and so forth.

Then we will all get a more realistic view of the true pace of employment disruption. Corporations are known for slowing down tech adoption (so that it doesn't destroy their business), and AI will be no different.

Everyone under 60 should be furiously learning how to leverage AI to do their existing job, and be thinking about the new roles that will inevitably be created by AI adoption.

Same is true for those who will soon be working alongside robotics.

The people who make it through this phase shift will be the new middle and upper class.

Those over 60 should be laser focused on AI, Robotics (& Drones), Self Driving Cars, Quantum Computing and Healthcare (hospitals full of AI and robots) investments, because the revolution is now. The ones that do this right will have a comfortable retirement.

2022 to 2023 year end: ~ 7K cut
2023 to 2024 year end: ~ 14K cut 2x 7K plus
2024 to 2025 year end: ~ 21K cut 3x 7K plus
2025 to 2026 year end: ~ 28K cut 4x 7K plus
2026 to 2027 year end: ~ 35K cut 5x 7K plus
2027 to 2028 year end: ~ 42K cut 6x 7K plus
2028 to 2029 year end: ~ 49K cut 7x 7K plus
2029 to 2030 year end: ~56K cut 8x 7K plus

The end. Game is over.

@gp Technology adoption has been getting faster for some time now.

Saw a chart which showed how much time it took to get to the first million users, then the first billion. Netflix was the slowest and OpenAI was measured in days.

Part of what has enabled this is that memory has been getting progressively cheaper, but of course AI is consuming so much of it that it is driving the unit price up, regardless of production cost. The industry will catch up to that pretty quickly.

The problem is that as the tech changes get faster, they are more disruptive to society and government response to that has not gotten any faster.

Add to that the fast that the latest AI tools are replacing the work flow and work product of most industries, and companies are pushing as fast as they can to not become obsolete.

That means mass layoffs this year, a ramp that started last year and will continue till companies find out just how much productivity gain can be accomplished. It is a tsunami of layoffs which will collapse consumer demand, and likely leads to a housing crash due to all the foreclosures. So bye bye to all those AirBnBs.

The cause is different but the result seems likely to resemble the 1930s, as far as how disruptive AI will be over the next decade. Certainly not helpful that governments around the world have been competing since 2008 to see who could print more money.

The market is not stupid and may have already started the process of price discovery, absent since Spring 2009. This could be one for the ages.

@g7 Microsoft CIO just did an interview and essentially said the same thing.

His timeline was 1 to 2 years, but the basic idea is the same. The latest Gen AI tools enable software writing to be entirely automated. Someone still has (for now) do the asking and someone still has to define the purpose, but that means hordes of developers will be unemployed within a year.

Similar results expected in various financial jobs, legal, medical, logistics and other roles where the value that the people are adding is essentially to transform data.

As robotics are really just AI platforms, that will have an impact within 2 years and is limited only by the mechanical requirements for the role.

Much like how the large tech companies are scrambling to disrupt their existing business (before it is taken from them), companies in a wide range of industries will adopt as fast as they can, or go under.

So the REAL target for Intel is a lot closer to 30K than 50K or 75K, and it will likely hit that target within 3 to 5 years.

All that disruption is also almost certain to crash the stock market, likely sooner than later.

@d5 I just read the article. I agree with you. The disruption that AI will bring is really not far off. I recently starting using AI models to help with planning projects on my land. I retired from Intel and bought rural property with plenty of good water. The quality of the results is amazing. Far better than the results I got a few years earlier. The models have improved dramatically. The models you get to access with a subscription are far better than the free versions. The results are much better. I was writing my own custom application for IP security cameras using Python. I gave the AI app my specific specifications and within a few hours I had a fully operational application far better than anything commercially available. All for a $20 a month subscription fee which I can cancel at any time. The code is really well documented and tested. Add those requirements as criteria.

To the naysayers in the crowd... If you don't think AI can do your job better than you spend $20 for a month of a subscription to OpenAI ChatGPT, Anthropic's Claude, or even Google Gemini. Give it a test ride by giving it some of your job tasks to complete and see if it doesn't return better work than you can do in less time and it doesn't complain even once if you ask it to redo something better.

@OP they are re-grading Gr 10+ where they can to increase attrition. Also tracking keystrokes, no not with RSI. Something is coming.
Need space to hire Lipton's cronies

If the article I just read on the Fortune channel on MSN is correct, by the end of this year AI will be replacing most computer-oriented work.

Fab type might consider just how much time they spend doing anything really physical and how much time they spend doing routine tasks on workstation and other PCs.

The big caveat is that the author is using a paid version of AI, not the free version, which is an older generation.

Not sure I can post a link but this is the title:
something-big-is-happening-in-ai-and-most-people-will-be-blindsided

Aside from what is estimated by some to be 50% unemployment coming up, think about what it means to all manner of investments.

The market is already set up to swan dive. AI may well be one of the many the black swans.

This could get ugly.

Anonymous - "Is this what you have projected, AFO ?"

AFO OFA Joe - Honestly, not my original question asked. However, I'm only seeking data/historical HC to chart ... found it!

Cheers!

PS: Smile, and the world smiles with you!

2022 to 2023: 7100 HC cut
2023 to 2024: 15900 HC cut more than double with additional 8800 from previous year
2024 to 2025: 23800 HC cut more than triple from previous 2 years
2025 to 2026: 30000 HC cut more than quadruple from previous 3 years ? —> 55K
2026 to 2027: 35000 HC cut estimate ? —> 20K

Is this what you have projected AFO ?

The foundry needs to shut. Only solution.

EOY Q4'25, Intel's worldwide headcount ~85,100 employees.

Key Headcount Trends:
2026: TBD
2025: ~85,100
2024: ~108,900
2023: ~124,800
2022: ~131,900

OP says this like it is a bad thing.

By the end of Q4 2026, 50K individuals remaining out of Intel's current headcount.

What is Intel's current worldwide headcount?