Andy Jassy recently addressed employees on the matter. He challenged them to lead the way on how AI would be integrated into the fabric of their company. He stressed the urgency as companies increasingly depend on AI solutions. This transition is set to greatly reduce the corporate workforce over the next several years.
US-based industries Jassy pointed out about the role AI is already having in all aspects of Amazon’s U.S. He said to that end it was leveraging AI across all aspects of its business. This extends through the entire product lifecycle, from building product information to developing advertising solutions. Right now, the half million sellers on Amazon’s third party marketplaces are using the company’s top-notch generative AI tools to improve and differentiate their products.
“Many of these agents have yet to be built, but make no mistake, they’re coming and coming fast,” Jassy noted. He expects those innovations to produce efficiency improvements, which will progressively enable Amazon to reduce its human workforce. Amazon only has 350,000 employees in office jobs. This would put it just behind Walmart as the second-largest employer in the United States.
Read literally, Jassy’s statement has huge implications. This is particularly concerning in light of the repeated warnings from experts regarding AI’s potentially devastating effects on employment. AI could remove as much as 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs, former OpenAI head Dario Amodei has warned. Even “Godfather of AI,” Geoffrey Hinton, is sounding the alarm on the emerging technology. He frets that it can supplant the boring but important things that people do today.
“This is a very different kind of technology,” Hinton remarked, further questioning the future job landscape. He added, “If it can do all mundane human intellectual labor, then what new jobs is it going to create? You’d have to be very skilled to have a job that it couldn’t just do.”
With companies throughout the technology sector massively increasing their investments into AI, Amazon seems dangerously positioned to keep getting out ahead. Advertisers on its platform are already adopting AI offerings to optimize their campaigns, indicating a broader trend toward automation and efficiency.
As The Seattle Times reports, Jassy stressed the importance of adaptation in the workforce. “We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs,” he stated. This lasting change will require significant reskilling and upskilling programs for millions of workers as they adapt and search for new opportunities in an evolving economy.