Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has a dull new message about AI. It will “reduce” the company's workforce over the next few years.
“As we deploy more generative AI and agents, we should change the way we work,” Jassy said in a note posted on Amazon's website. “There are fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people are doing other types of work.”
“It's difficult to know exactly where this will go online over time, but we expect that over the next few years this will result in increased efficiency across the company, which will reduce the total workforce of the company,” he continued.
According to the website, Amazon currently employs around 1.5 million workers. It is unclear how many employees or sectors will be affected by AI-driven employment cuts.
Business Insider previously reported that the company is freeze on its retail employment budget this year.
In a revenue call in March, the company announced it would spend $100 billion on capital expenditures.
Jassy is not the first executive to suggest that advances in AI are likely to translate into business recruitment. Conversations about these types of reductions have become increasingly common and hypotheses have become less common.
British Telecom Giant BT CEO Allison Kirkby warned in 2023 that AI could lead to further job cuts for the company after BT announced plans to eliminate 55,000 roles by 2030, Business Insider previously reported.
In late May, humanity CEO Dario Amodei suggested that AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs. Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski said earlier this month that he expects the impact AI will have on white-collar jobs to be extremely important and lead to a recession.
“It doesn't matter if you're a programmer, designer, project manager, data scientist, lawyer, customer support representative, sales representative or finance representative. AI is here for you,” wrote Micha Kaufman, CEO and founder of the freelance job site Fiverr, who wrote an April email to employees. Share on LinkedIn.
Jassy advised workers in his statement on how to navigate the changing professional landscape, describing AI as “the most transformative technology since the internet.”
“As we move this transformation together, we will be interested in AI, educating ourselves, attending workshops, trained, experimenting with AI whenever possible, joining team brainstorming to find ways to be faster and broader for our customers and accomplishing more with faster teams. “People who embrace this change, become familiar with AI, build and improve AI capabilities internally, and provide our customers will be positioned well to help us to have a high impact and reinvent our company.”
When Business Insider reached, an Amazon spokesperson declined to comment further on Jassy's remarks.
