“AI Will Cause Many Corporate Employees to Lose Their Jobs”: Amazon CEO Andy Jassy
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has issued a cautionary message: while embracing artificial intelligence (AI), he warned that the number of corporate employees may decline in the coming years due to the growing influence of this technology. In a recent message to employees, Jassy encouraged them to embrace AI and expressed his vision of its long-term impact, as reported by international media outlets.
Amid rising global concerns about job losses, Amazon has become the latest tech giant to publicly outline its plans to use AI in its operations.
According to Jassy, AI will help enhance efficiency, which in turn will allow the company to reduce its corporate workforce.
He wrote: “Many of the tasks employees perform today will require fewer people in the future, and we’ll need more people for different kinds of roles.”
Jassy further explained: “It’s hard to predict the exact outcome over time, but we believe that increased efficiency through widespread AI adoption will eventually reduce our total number of corporate employees over the next few years.”
In recent years, particularly in the tech sector, companies have invested heavily in AI. Thanks to technological advances, it's now easier than ever to generate code, images, and text with minimal input through AI-powered chatbots, according to Reuters.
With the rising popularity of these AI tools, some tech leaders have raised concerns about the risk of job loss, especially for office-based and entry-level positions.
Last month, Dario Amodei, CEO of AI startup Anthropic, told Axios that AI could eliminate many basic office jobs, possibly even half of all entry-level roles.
Renowned AI researcher and "Godfather of AI" Geoffrey Hinton also reiterated his warnings about AI in a recent podcast. Hinton worked at Google for many years before resigning to speak freely about the potential dangers of AI.
Despite the risk of job losses, some argue that AI will create new types of jobs. But Hinton disagrees, stating:
“This is a completely different kind of technology. If AI can perform all intellectual tasks like humans, what new jobs will be left? The only jobs available will be those AI can’t do.”
As of late last year, Amazon employed more than 1.5 million people worldwide, most of them based in the U.S., making it the second-largest private employer in the country after Walmart. Among them, around 350,000 employees work in office-based roles, according to a BBC report.
In his internal memo, Jassy stated that Amazon is using AI in “nearly every area” of its operations. He expressed optimism that in the future, AI-powered agents could even handle routine tasks like shopping or household chores.
He added:
“Much of this technology hasn’t been built yet, but don’t assume it’s not coming. It is — and it’s coming fast.”
Jassy concluded by saying that those who embrace these changes will be well-positioned within the company.
