Chemical maker Dow is cutting 4,500 jobs, will rely on AI
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chemical-maker-dow-cutting-4-131255182.html
Chemical maker Dow is cutting 4,500 jobs, will rely on AI
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chemical-maker-dow-cutting-4-131255182.html
12 Comments
“Chemical maker Dow Inc. is the latest company to announce substantial layoffs as it pivots to a stronger reliance on artificial intelligence and automation.
The moves represent roughly 12% of the company’s workforce.
Dow joins a growing number of companies that are shrinking their workforce. Pinterest, earlier this week, announced plans to reduce its workforce by 15% and Amazon, on Wednesday, said it would cut 16,000 jobs, as it pushed AI and efficiency.”
Yeah, because you want Gemini to tell you which chemicals to mix together.
Chemical maker DOW is giving AI credit/blame for cutting 4,000 workers.
[Dow Inc.’s profitability from 2023 through 2025 has been defined by a cyclical downturn in the chemical industry, characterized by oversupply, weak demand, and reduced prices, leading to significantly lower earnings compared to 2021-2022 peaks. **As of late 2025, the company is experiencing a “lower-for-longer” earnings environment**, with full-year 2025 showing a GAAP net loss of $2.4 billion, down from a $1.1 billion net income in 2024.](https://investors.dow.com/en/news/news-details/2026/Dow-reports-fourth-quarter-2025-results/default.aspx)
This story is not in reality about AI taking jobs.
It is about DOW executives cutting thousands of jobs to make its bottom line look better for a quarter or two, and handwaving away concerns with magical thinking.
Given their track record, it’s not like they had safety standards before
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They are just using AI as a scapegoat to scale back on employees. AI has very little capabilities to actually replace real people doing real work.
So in an industry notorious for regulations written in blood we can expect at least *one* catastrophic event and subsequent loss of life as a result of this decision.
Going to be super fun when they have another leak, hopefully not another Union Carbide level one. “It wasn’t human error, it was a program error, sue to the company who made the program”
But how can you poison the entire world with PFOAs by using AI computers?
And by AI they mean 4500 people in India doing the work manually.
Wow! This on top of the big 3 cutting jobs. Workers are getting shafted in Michigan.
I worked at Dow and was involved in the merger/spinoff with DuPont in 2018. AI is the scapegoat here. Every single person in the company knew the merger/spin was a bad idea. We gave up all our high margin specialty business lines to go all in on commodities. The company hasn’t been performing since.
This is straight up bad business decisions resulting in a desperate push to hit targets. Andrew Liveris sold the company’s future for a short term stock play.