Wave of AI-driven layoffs continues: companies choose between cutting costs and strengthening capabilities
Major companies worldwide, including HP, IBM, Accenture and Amazon, are cutting thousands of jobs because AI can take over their work, while Dutch organizations such as ING, Bird and APG are also reducing staff. According to a column by AI-watcher Aaron Mirck on MT/Sprout, the key question is not whether AI costs jobs, but whether companies use AI to cut costs or to genuinely create more value.
New round of layoffs: HP cuts 6,000 jobs due to AI
HP is set to lay off 6,000 employees because artificial intelligence can take over their tasks. That's according to AI-watcher Aaron Mirck in a column on MT/Sprout, published on 22 September 2026. HP is not the first major company to reduce its workforce in this way — and according to the column, it won't be the last.
The list of companies taking similar steps is long, according to the column. IBM is said to be laying off 9,000 employees, Accenture 11,000, TCS (Tata Consultancy Services) 12,000, and Amazon 14,000. Pinterest is now operating with 15 percent fewer staff thanks to AI deployment, and at WiseTech Global the workforce is said to have shrunk by almost 30 percent. These figures are drawn from the column itself; independent confirmation per company is not provided in the source.
Dutch companies are also cutting jobs
The phenomenon is not limited to the international stage. According to the column, ING announced it would let go of 950 employees due to the use of AI. Dutch company Bird laid off 20 percent of its staff, and pension provider APG expects to be able to cut between 1,000 and 1,200 jobs through AI applications. Here too, the figures come from the column and have not been independently verified.
Klarna: from cost-cutting to hiring again
Swedish fintech Klarna is cited in the column as an example of a notable change of course. The company previously claimed that 700 employees were no longer needed, because chatbots were handling two-thirds of customer contact. Later, Klarna announced it actually wanted to hire new people again. CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski shared a statement on X along the lines of: in a world of AI, nothing will be as valuable as people, adding self-critically that this realization came late. The exact, original wording of this statement has not been independently verified.
Automating or strengthening: the real dilemma
The core of Mirck's column is not the tally of layoffs, but the question that precedes it: do companies deploy AI as a tool for automation — to cut costs and eliminate jobs — or as a tool for augmentation, expanding what employees are capable of? According to Mirck, most companies are currently choosing the former route, based on the idea that labor is primarily a cost item. He raises a critical question in this context: does service quality hold up when companies operate with fewer people?
To support this, the column refers to economists from Stanford and MIT, without naming specific individuals, a publication, or a year. Their argument is said to be that most economic value is not created by making existing products cheaper, but by developing entirely new products and services. Their advice: don't use AI primarily to automate work, but to augment human effort — in industry jargon, 'augmentation' rather than 'automation'.
An example from practice
As an illustration, the column cites a communications specialist working with AI. That person can adapt a single text to suit ten different target audiences — a form of augmentation — or use the same technology to make ten colleagues redundant, a form of automation. Which route a company chooses, according to the column, is not up to the employee, but to company leadership.
Conclusion: a leadership choice
The wave of layoffs at major international and Dutch companies shows that AI is impacting workforces worldwide. Whether this ultimately leads to cheaper versions of existing work or to new forms of value depends, according to the column, largely on the strategic choices business leaders are making now between automation and augmentation.