Following the example of many other chief executives of major firms, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in a company memo that, thanks to AI, the retail giant will need fewer corporate employees.
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Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in a company memo that, thanks to AI, the retail giant will need fewer corporate employees.
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Jassy’s remarks might unnerve thousands of white-collar workers toiling away at Amazon, the second-largest private employer in the US.
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The warning to Amazon workers comes as the debate about whether AI will be a job killer or creator heats up.
In a message shared with Amazon employees on Wednesday, Jassy not only praised the corporation’s AI products such as Alexa or Bedrock, but also said that AI was going to replace quite a few corporate jobs.
“We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs,” Jassy wrote.
“It’s hard to know exactly where this nets out over time, but in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.”
Jassy’s remarks might unnerve thousands of white-collar workers toiling away at Amazon, the second-largest private employer in the United States.
For good measure, the Amazon CEO urged workers to “be curious about AI” and added: “Those who embrace this change, become conversant in AI, help us build and improve our AI capabilities internally and deliver for customers, will be well-positioned to have high impact and help us reinvent the company.”
In other words, if you don’t like the transformation, you may just as well look for another job, it would seem. It’s probably no accident that, according to The Washington Post, HR representatives specifically instructed workers to read Jassy’s email.
Dario Amodei, CEO of AI company Anthropic, said last month that unemployment could spike to 20% in the next few years precisely because of the advances in AI development.
The warning to Amazon workers comes as the debate about whether AI will be a job killer or creator heats up. Top CEOs of the tech industry are setting the tone.
Dario Amodei, CEO of AI company Anthropic, said last month that unemployment could spike to 20% in the next few years precisely because of the advances in AI development.
Salesforce boss Marc Benioff also told a podcaster his company might not even hire any new engineers this year because of “incredible productivity gains” from AI tools.
“There's no question the world is changing, when it gets down to labor and delivering the next generation of labor,” Benioff said.
Finally, Allison Kirkby, the CEO of the British telecoms giant BT Group, has recently touted an opportunity for the firm to cut even more jobs than initially planned, all thanks to “the full potential of AI.”
However, according to The Information’s Theo Wayt, there’s probably a pretty rational (though typically ruthless) reason all these companies are now mentioning future layoffs.
Since they’re pouring tens of billions of dollars into AI, all that spending needs to be translated into revenue, Wayt said, and “there’s no better way for Amazon to sell its AI tools to clients than to point to all the jobs it’s been able to cut within its own ranks as a result of the technology.”
After all, a Microsoft executive also praised the productivity benefits of OpenAI-powered tools shortly before laying off staff in May.
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