Amazon staff fire up after CEO Andy Jassy drops artificial intelligence bombshell

Employees working for the tech giant were left gobsmacked after the CEO made the brutal artificial intelligence revelation in a recent staff memo.

The boss of tech giant Amazon has just said the quiet part out loud about what artificial intelligence advancements means for the workforce – and employees are not happy.

CEO Andy Jassy, who took over from founder Jeff Bezos in 2021, dropped a bombshell on employees, revealing he expects the rise of generative AI to “reduce” Amazon’s corporate workforce over the coming years.

The warning was part of a recent memo shared on the company’s website, in which he talks about how, as the company “leans into” generative AI services, it will “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,” Ms 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.”

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said he expects advancements in generative AI to ‘reduce’ the company’s corporate workforce. Picture: Andy Jassy/LinkedIn

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Amazon’s corporate workforce is estimated to include around 350,000 people, with the company’s total workforce totalling more than 1.5 million workers.

The tech company already has more than 1000 generative AI services and applications in progress or being built, with the CEO stating this represents just a “small fraction” of what they ultimately want to create.

Mr Jassy encouraged staff to be “curious” about AI and to educate themselves on the technology, suggesting they use it to figure out “how to get more done with scrappier teams”.

The bold statement that the company plans to cut jobs in line with technology advancements, unsurprisingly, hasn’t gone down too well with Amazon employees.

Dozens of messages, reviewed by Business Insider, sent on internal Slack channels allegedly showed staff up in arms following the memo.

Many staff members reportedly pushed back, saying the company should be viewing AI as a way to aid productivity rather than downsizing the workforce.

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The memo didn’t go down very well with Amazon staff. Picture: Denis Charlet/AFP

“We need to lead the change in reframing AI as partners (even teammates or colleagues) rather than AI as replacements or tools. It’s a slightly different vision than the one Andy alludes to,” one person wrote, according to the publication.

In a sarcastic jab, another reportedly said that there was nothing more inspiring than reading that a person’s role might be replaced by AI within a few years.

One employee branded the focus on cost cutting over customer satisfaction “dangerous”, claiming it could have “real consequences”.

Other sentiments included concerns around using headcount cuts to measure success and the potential ramifications of relying too much on AI.

It comes as the head of one of the world’s most powerful artificial intelligence labs recently warned the technology could eliminate half of all entry-level, white-collar jobs within the next five years.

Anthropic chief executive officer Dario Amodei told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that politicians and businesses are not prepared for the spike in unemployment rates AI could prompt.

“AI is starting to get better than humans at almost all intellectual tasks, and we’re going to collectively, as a society, grapple with it,” the 42-year-old said.

“AI is going to get better at what everyone does, including what I do, including what other CEOs do.”

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Anthropic’s AI can work nearly seven hours a day, he said, and has the skills typically required of entry-level corporate workers – “the ability to summarise a document, analyse a bunch of sources and put it into a report, write computer code” – at the same standard “as a smart college student”.

Amazon’s new memo isn’t the only AI-related announcement from a major company in recent months that has sparked concern.

In March, Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke told staff that they would now be expected to prove why certain jobs can’t be done using AI.

“Before asking for more Headcount and resources, teams must demonstrate why they cannot get what they want done using AI,” he said.

“What would this area look like if autonomous AI agents were already part of the team? This question can lead to really fun discussions and projects.”

The bold announcement was included in an internal memo sent by Mr Lutke, with the CEO then sharing it to his own social media after hearing that it was “being leaked” and “presumably shown in bad faith”.

The lengthy memo also stated that the use of AI was a “fundamental expectation of everyone at Shopify”, with Mr Lutke also stating AI usage questions would be included in performance and peer review questionnaire.

The CEO’s email has gained widespread attention, with responses split between praise for embracing new technology and horror at seemingly encouraging the replacement of jobs by AI.

One respondent branded the CEO’s position as “cold and lacking empathy to humans”, while another claimed they would resign on the spot if their employer sent out this type of directive.

Others questioned why the onus should be on the staff to prove the role can’t be done by AI, rather than on the company to prove that AI can do a better job than a human.

There were also concerns about what this type of mindset meant for graduates who are just entering the workforce and would likely be going into the types of roles the company is encouraging staff to use AI to complete.

One person said that, while they believe encouraging AI is the right path, it was “just a scary one” as it leads to less employment for people over time.

“It also starts to beg the question of how does the next generation get into the workforce if traditional entry level jobs are now being done by AI,” they wrote.

Originally published as Amazon staff fire up after CEO Andy Jassy drops artificial intelligence bombshell