Amazon boss tells staff AI means their jobs are at risk in coming years | Artificial intelligence (AI) – Andrew Jassy tells white collar workers that such technology means fewer people will be needed for some jobs
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jun/18/amazon-boss-tells-staff-ai-means-their-jobs-are-at-risk-in-coming-years
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From the article
The boss of [Amazon](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/amazon) has told white collar staff at the e-commerce company their jobs could be taken by artificial intelligence in the next few years.
Andrew Jassy told employees that AI agents – tools that carry out tasks autonomously – and generative AI systems such as chatbots would require fewer employees in certain areas.
“As we roll out more generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done,” he said in a memo to staff. “We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs.
“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.”
What are all these corporations gonna do when they’ve squeezed the last out of the extinct middle class and have almost nobody left to afford goods and services from them?
Guess that’s for the guy in charge next quarter to worry about.
This was always the end goal for businesses regarding AI. Once it gets advanced enough to perform the tasks of a worker flawlessly, out the real people go.
Even if the AI is good at implementing features, why would you shrink R&D headcount? Why not do more stuff? There’s always stuff you’re not doing because you’re understaffed.
Is the idea that the specific employees being laid off don’t have the potential/skills to fill staff engineer type roles?
I mean, it is true, isn’t it? That is one major selling point of AI. It will replace tasks currently done by inefficient humans.
The hope is that AI won’t necessarily replace current workers, but at the very least, it will make companies hire less staff in the future.
In any case, there will be fewer and fewer jobs where human work makes sense.