Computer maker HP is joining the growing list of companies that are conveniently announcing company-wide AI initiatives and plans to cut thousands of jobs at the same time.
HP shared on Tuesday that it expects to scale artificial intelligence within the company and lay off about 4,000-6,000 employees by the end of 2028. With roughly 56,000 employees, that comes up to a 10% workforce reduction.
“Looking forward, we are taking decisive actions to mitigate recent cost headwinds and are investing in AI-enabled initiatives to accelerate product innovation, improve customer satisfaction, and boost productivity,” HP CFO Karen Parkhill said in the press release. Per the Guardian, the cuts will be centered around the product development, internal operations, and customer support teams.
It’s safe to say that 2025 has so far been dominated by the question of whether or not AI is leading to mass unemployment.
The job market is grim. Companies are cutting back on hiring new employees, while some are laying off hundreds to make investors happy in the next earnings report.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell said in September that although there is still great uncertainty, he believes that AI is “probably a factor” in the dramatic slowdown in hiring, particularly when it comes to young graduates who are facing a particularly concerning unemployment situation.
There have been studies to back this phenomenon up as well. A Stanford study from August found that workers aged 22 to 25 in the most AI-exposed jobs were hit hardest by a decline in employment. Many deem the jobs that are easiest to automate are those that would be done by young graduates. Experts have voiced concerns over the impact this will have on society as a whole, as less early career work would mean that the next generation of the workforce won’t receive crucial training.
Even without the studies, companies have been openly and even proudly pointing the finger at AI as the reason why they are laying people off or just not hiring as much.
Online learning platform Chegg laid off 45% of its workforce recently, citing “new realities of AI” as a factor. Amazon slashed 14,000 white-collar jobs, first seemingly pointing the finger at the “transformative technology” of AI before claiming days later that the cuts were not financially nor AI-driven.
Many executives, like Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke and Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn, have also been clear about their wish to reduce hiring in favor of automation. PwC global chairman told BBC last week that the company had scrapped plans it made in 2021 to hire 100,000 people by 2026, because “now we have artificial intelligence.”
Still, though, some experts dispute that premise.
“It’s much harder to implement AI in a firm than people realize,” Robert Seamans, New York University professor of management and organizations, told Gizmodo in August. “Firms don’t typically have the in-house talent that’s needed to train, operate, and oversee whatever AI they implement, and so until you have the personnel in place that have that expertise, it’s going to be really hard to rely heavily on AI.”
An MIT report from August can back this up: corporate AI pilots are not as good as they seem at generating actual revenue gains.
Seamans believes that at least some of these companies are actually using AI as a scapegoat for layoffs that stem from things like economic uncertainty or tariffs, which are “much harder to blame.”
Meanwhile, Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar called the “all-powerful-AI-taking-over-jobs” narrative a Silicon Valley “fundraising shtick,” in a recent conversation with the New York Times.
Author Cory Doctorow, on the other hand, thinks that AI is unable to successfully replace many workers but bosses, and specifically tech bosses, “love the story” as a means to terrify workers into working more and complaining less (since, hypothetically, an AI chatbot could do all that work and not have to take breaks).
“It gives them a chance to put them in their place,” Doctorow said in a talk last month.
