Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said on Tuesday that he expects Amazon's corporate workforce to decrease in number in the coming years as AI takes over tasks.
In a memo to staff, Jassy wrote 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.
Amazon is applying AI to improve its internal operations. The company is utilizing AI agents in its warehouses to improve delivery speed and has infused its customer service chatbot with AI capabilities, Jassy wrote. He noted that AI has also allowed Amazon to put together more detailed product pages on its site.
These new AI capabilities mean that Amazon needs fewer human employees. Jassy stated that as Amazon builds more AI agents to take over tasks in its business units, the company will make cuts to its human workforce.
"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 in the memo. "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 advised 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.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Amazon employees took to internal Slack channels on Tuesday to criticize Jassy's message, per Business Insider. In dozens of messages that reached thousands of employees, 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.
Amazon has laid off more than 27,000 employees since the start of 2022 to reduce costs. The tech giant has made dozens of cuts this year to its communications and sustainability departments, devices and services unit, and books division.
The company is also planning to invest heavily in AI this year, outpacing its peers. According to a quarterly earnings call in February, Amazon plans to spend about $105 billion in capital expenses this year, with the majority of expenditure going toward AI. In comparison, Microsoft is spending $80 billion on AI this fiscal year, Google's parent company, Alphabet, is expecting $75 billion, and Meta is preparing to spend about $65 billion.
Amazon has more than 350,000 corporate employees and 1.56 million full-time and part-time global employees as of March 31.
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