Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said something via a blog post on Tuesday that created quite a stir in the AI world. Jassy noted that efficiency gains from AI would allow the company to eventually have a reduced human workforce.
“As we roll out more Generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done. We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs,” he wrote.
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“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 also said AI won’t just “affect change at Amazon,” it will also “change how we all work and live” including “billions” of AI agents “across every company and in every imaginable field.” He added, “Many of these agents have yet to be built, but make no mistake, they’re coming, and coming fast.” He also urged his employees to see AI as “teammates we can call on at various stages of our work, and that will get wiser and more helpful with more experience.”
Jassy urged employees to attend workshops and trainings on AI, to use the technology whenever possible, and to tap into AI to get more done with smaller teams. He said that employees who “embrace” AI and “become conversant” in it will be best-positioned to help the company move forward.
Jassy mentioned that Amazon is already using or building over 1,000 generative AI services and applications, “a small fraction” of what the e-commerce giant will ultimately create. These AI agents can act on their own to conduct deep research, write code, and translate languages. The company is using AI to improve internal operations, as well as to improve delivery speed in warehouses. Amazon’s customer service chatbot has also been infused with AI capabilities.
In addition, AI has also allowed Amazon to put together more detailed product pages on its site.
According to Business Insider, Amazon employees heavily criticized Jassy’s message via Slack. While some workers expressed hesitation about the reliability of AI, which some called “dangerous” due to its tendency to hallucinate or make up answers. Others voiced concerns about possible layoffs in the coming years. “There is nothing more motivating on a Tuesday than reading that your job will be replaced by AI in a few years,” one person wrote in Slack, per BI.
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Over 27,000 Amazon employees had been laid off since the start of 2022 to reduce costs. Major cuts have been made this year to its communications and sustainability departments, devices and services unit, and books division.
Jassy’s statements come amid other warnings and statements by tech industry leaders over AI’s effects on jobs. In May, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned on CNN that the technology will spike unemployment sooner than unprepared political leaders and businesses expect. AI, including tools Anthropic itself is building, could eliminate half of entry-level, white-collar jobs and boost unemployment to as much as 20% in the next one to five years. However, critics claim these warnings aren’t really based on research, and come from people who would profit from increased AI use.