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Intel’s CEO Biffs Madly, Medium’s AI Problem, and More Jobs

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November 12, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes

Hello, person-out-there! It’s November 12th—and on this day in 1990, Tim Berner-Lee submitted a formal proposal for a hypertext project he calls “The WorldWideWeb”. And by Christmas of 1990 he’d have a prototype server and a prototype browser up and running. Good for Tim! We kind of miss people calling it the “World Wide Web”, tbh.

Thanks for that trip down a memory cul-de-sac. But now, let’s get started on this week:

How the Intel CEO Biffed His Comeback

When Pat Gelsinger took the reins at Intel as CEO three years ago, he was faced with a monumental task: turn the aging American computing giant around, and get the profits margin out of the red.

Under Gelsinger, Intel has cratered:

  • Revenue dropped to $54 billion in 2023 (down nearly one-third since he took over)

  • The company is expected to post its first annual loss since 1986

  • Share price has fallen 66% from its peak during Gelsinger's early days

  • Multiple high-profile customer contracts were lost or canceled

How did this happen? Well, Gelsinger’s plans of turning Intel into a chip “foundry” (i.e. a company that makes chips for other companies) fell apart for one key reason: the chips sucked. Only 20% of chips passed Broadcom's initial testing — a yield rate that wouldn't cut it in a high school electronics lab, let alone enterprise production. Apple and Qualcomm have already given the process a hard pass.

Then Gelsinger put his foot in his mouth when he insulted TSMC’s Taiwan-based operations. In retaliation, TSMC stopped Intel’s steep discount of their chips

Then there was Intel’s “creative” accounting: Gelsinger wanted to move into the AI chip space, so Intel projected $500M in AI chip sales (realistic)… while management publicly claimed $1B by bundling in unrelated silicon (sneaky). This threw investors off, and shares and contracts went a-tumblin’.

Gelsinger managed to get a plum $45B check from Biden’s CHIPS Act, but it’s looking largely like investors and the public are having a hard time trusting Intel now. Gelsinger, meanwhile, remains optimistic, saying that Intel should be back on top in 2025.

“I'm very confident that we're going to pull it off,” Gelsinger told Reuters reporter back in August. “Three years in, yeah. This one's going to happen, baby.”

With lines like that… how can this guy miss?

AI Accounts for 47% of Medium Posts

Medium has always been a bit of an odd duck of a blogging platform. Originally launched in 2012 to be a fancier, schmancier way to blog (for those not emo enough for Tumblr and yet not boomer enough for Blogspot), Medium has never quite found its footing.

It’s pivoted many times over the last 12 years: at one point it tried to be a “thought leader” platform, at another point it tried to be Twitter—it shares a founder—for people who don’t like Twitter. And today, in 2024, its become a sort of scrap-yard for internet writing.

You’ll still find the occasional brave soul trying to eke out a 1,000 word essay on their chosen field of expertise. But more often than not you’ll now find articles written entirely by AI. The robobloggers appeared to have taken over the platform, accounting for nearly half of Medium’s recent output.

Want proof? Here’s proof. AI detection startup Pangram Labs analyzed 274,466 recent posts over a six-week period in 2024 and, according to Wired, “estimated that over 47% were likely AI-generated.” This is a 40% increase over any other global “news” site (Note: Medium technically falls into a ‘news’ platform). Most of the AI generated posts are about either cryptocurrency, online marketing, or are blatant SEO grabs.

Medium CEO Tony Stubblebine doesn’t seem to care. “It doesn't matter,” he told Wired and went on to highlight the 9,000 human editors that Medium has, saying that this army of editors actually keeps a lot of AI from going to a wider audience.

Perhaps, though, Medium is just like the rest of the internet. The sudden unleashing of AI to an internet populace that had just figured out how to game search engines has caused hundreds, thousands, and millions of blog posts to pop up, meaning that real human writing gets lost amongst the tornado of AI generated output.

There’s no putting toothpaste back in the tube, the genie back in the bottle, or (goes to Chat GPT for a 3rd option) cached data back in RAM (nice). Who’s to say how much AI content is too much? Medium may just be the start.

👨‍💻 Job Opportunities

Great opp here for someone with deep expertise in cloud technologies, enterprise system integration, and data warehouse development, with a focus on Microsoft and Salesforce. Arabella is all about making an impact to achieve the greatest good (women’s equality, addressing climate change, etc), so tailor that cover letter to reflect that.

Are you right out of college, looking for a great job, and really love Pinterest? Then (smacks the top of this job listing) you could be driving home in this! Python experience is 100% necessary, but the job-listing is surprisingly open-ended. It’s full-time, remote, and a great job for a recent grad.

Mixpanel is an event analytics platform with clients ranging from Netflix, Pinterest, and Sweetgreen to Samsara and Uber. You’ll be dealing with customers 1 on 1 primarily via Zendesk email, or online chat and occasionally over phone calls. Perfect for someone who loves connecting with others.

If you are “passionate about crafting visually stunning, high-performancing web experiences” for injury law firms across America, this job is for you if you’re also into HTML and CSS coding, quality assurance, testing, and seamless publishing. Inventing a word like “performancing” aside, the position looks pretty good.

 🛩 Industry Moves

VMware Exodus? Not so fast…

Over half (51.9%) of VMWare users are considering abandoning services following the acquisition by Broadcom. All eyes are on VMware Explore Barcelona 2024 for a chance for the company to claw back user support.

Armis Raises $200M

After raising $200M in a round of funding led by Alkeon Capital, cybersecurity risk management company Armis is now evaluated at $4.2B. It would be easy to write a joke like “You and who’s Armis?” or “Ana De Armis” but I will refrain from doing so.

Global Payments Offloads Medical Wing

Global Payments—great name, no notes—is selling off AdvancedMD to investment firm Francisco Partners for $1.13 billion. They’re using a big part of that to fast-track a $600 million accelerated stock buyback plan.

💽 Data Upload

And that’s all! Our typin’ fingers are steaming, so it’s time to hang them up until next week. Thanks for reading.

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