Intel lays off 22,000 employees today, 20% of its entire workforce

It is possibly the most devastating news we could report today, and also the clearest indication of how AI will affect the tech industry. Bloomberg has just reported on Intel's plans to lay off 22,000 employees, approximately 20% of its global workforce.

22,000 people in one fell swoop, according to Bloomberg's report, to be lost in a major operation to cut the company's costs by $10 billion and completely rethink its operational structure. One of the first decisions of its new CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, who was already advocating this measure and delegating work to AI despite the fact that this massive wave of layoffs has been described as a reduction of bureaucratic inefficiency.

Last month, Reuters news agency reported that Tan was considering significant changes to its chip manufacturing methods and AI strategies, with staff cuts to deal with what Tan described as "a slow and bloated middle management layer". Shortly after his appointment, he told employees at a town hall that the company will have to make "tough decisions."

Our thoughts are with those tens of thousands of people who have lost their jobs today, and it also sets a dark precedent in that we will surely see more staff "redundancies" in the tech sector now that AI is taking centre stage in large-scale workflow.