A sizzling potato: CEOs like to sing the praises of generative AI whereas tiptoeing across the truth it’ll value folks their jobs. However Amazon boss Andy Jassy has simply mentioned the quiet half out loud, admitting that the expertise will scale back the corporate’s company workforce over the following few years.
In a message despatched to staff this week, Jassy mentioned generative AI was a “once-in-a-lifetime” expertise that fully adjustments what’s potential for patrons and companies.
Jassy went on to spotlight the completely different areas of Amazon the place AI and brokers are being applied. “As we roll out extra generative AI and brokers, it ought to change the best way our work is completed. We’ll want fewer folks doing among the jobs which can be being achieved as we speak, and extra folks doing different sorts of jobs,” he mentioned.
The CEO revealed that Amazon now has over 1,000 generative AI providers and functions in progress or constructed, and extra are coming.
Then got here the half most executives skip over: “It is onerous to know precisely the place this nets out over time, however within the subsequent few years, we count on that this may scale back our whole company workforce as we get effectivity positive factors from utilizing AI extensively throughout the corporate.”
Andy Jassy actually loves generative AI
Amazon is one in every of many tech giants that has gone all-in on AI since its arrival. Jassy mentioned final 12 months that it may very well be as large because the cloud and web. He additionally dedicated to spending $100 billion this 12 months on the expertise.
It is likely to be thrilling and money-saving instances for Amazon and Jassy, however the firm’s 1.5 million staff are unlikely to be as thrilled.
Jassy did provide some recommendation to apprehensive employees: “be interested by AI, educate your self, attend workshops and take trainings, use and experiment with AI each time you’ll be able to, take part in your crew’s brainstorms to determine the right way to invent for our prospects extra shortly and expansively.” All that can doubtless be helpful as they hunt for a brand new job.
It isn’t simply company employees which can be beneath risk from new expertise. Amazon has launched a whole lot of 1000’s of robots to its warehouses over the previous few years. The machines have gotten more and more superior and human-like: the most recent AI-powered mannequin has a way of contact. Amazon can be experimenting with humanoid robots in its supply operations.
A few of these not being changed by AI at Amazon are discovering the expertise is making their lives more durable, not simpler. Software program engineers at the moment are beneath large strain on the firm as managers elevate expectations and tighten deadlines, pushing engineers to undertake AI-powered instruments like Microsoft’s Copilot and Amazon’s assistants to maintain up with the relentless tempo. Improvement groups being reduce in half is exacerbating the state of affairs, which has been in comparison with an meeting line.
The dialog about jobs misplaced to AI has intensified just lately. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei just lately warned that the expertise may wipe out about half of all entry-level white-collar jobs within the subsequent 5 years, resulting in unemployment spikes of as much as 20%. Nvidia boss Jensen Huang, whose firm is driving the AI revolution with its {hardware}, disagrees – naturally.
