Profit IDR 161 trillion, this company has the heart to lay off thousands of workers

Jakarta –

Despite making huge profits, this technology giant still has the heart to lay off many of its employees. It was the networking company Cisco that posted a huge profit of USD 10.3 billion last year or about IDR 161 trillion.

Nevertheless, mentioned detikINET from Futurism, the company is still laying off or laying off 5,500 employees as part of its efforts to invest more in AI.

The company is following in the footsteps of several other companies such as Microsoft, which have used AI as justification for laying off large parts of their workforce. The layoffs at Cisco were disclosed in a notice posted on the Securities and Exchange Commission, affecting approximately 7% of its total workforce.

In a brief statement, CEO Chuck Robbins used the term AI five times, highlighting the company’s efforts to keep up with the ongoing AI race. Earlier this year, Cisco laid off 4,000 or 5% of its workforce. The reason is that the company wants to realign the organization and enable further investment in key priority areas.

In short, companies are no longer hiding their hopes of replacing human workers with AI. However, it remains to be seen whether this decision will pay off in the long run.

News of the layoffs helped boost Cisco’s stock price. The problem is that companies are starting to use AI often as a reason for their restructuring efforts. Well, experts are still skeptical and believe that this technology is actually being used as a cover to cut workers.

“Battle of robots is a great cover story. But if you look deeper, it’s often old economic dynamics like outsourcing or managing costs to raise wages for other people.” said Oxford University economist and data scientist Fabian Stephany.

(fyk/fyk)