Amazon employees are sounding the alarm about AI in an open letter to CEO Andy Jassy and the company’s senior leadership team.
The letter was published last week with signatures from more than 1,000 anonymous Amazon employees, ranging from Whole Foods cashiers to IT support technicians. That’s just a fraction of Amazon’s roughly 1.53 million employees, according to the company’s third-quarter earnings report.
In the petition, employees allege that the company is “developing AI at the expense of climate goals,” forcing the use of AI technology while prioritizing AI investment and cutting workforces, and helping create a “more militarized surveillance state with fewer protections for civilians.”
“We, the undersigned Amazon employees, are gravely concerned by this aggressive development at a time when authoritarianism is on the rise globally and at a most critical time to reverse the climate crisis,” the letter’s authors wrote. “We believe that an approach that justifies every cost and approaches AI development at warp speed will do incredible damage to our democracies, our jobs, and our planet.”
The letter noted that Amazon’s global carbon footprint has increased since 2019, despite a goal of net zero by 2040.
Amazon said luck Claims that the company has abandoned its commitment to climate change are “completely false and ignore the facts,” it said in a statement.
“Amazon is already committed to making our business more sustainable and investing in carbon-free energy, including supporting two advanced nuclear power agreements and investing in more than 600 renewable energy projects around the world,” Amazon spokesperson Brad Glasser said. luck In a statement, the company added that it is working to improve the energy efficiency of its operations, including its data centers.
Amazon increased its carbon footprint by 6% last year, due in part to the rapid expansion of its data centers.
In November, Amazon announced plans to invest up to $50 billion to scale AI and supercomputing infrastructure for U.S. government customers on AWS starting in 2026. According to a March 2024 Bloomberg report, the tech giant plans to spend nearly $150 billion on data centers over the next 15 years.
Amazon Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky told analysts on a third-quarter earnings call that the company has spent $89.9 billion so far this year primarily to strengthen its cloud computing business, Amazon Web Services. The investment is to support Amazon’s demand for AI and core services, as well as technology infrastructure such as data centers, Olsavsky added.
Meanwhile, Amazon announced in October that it would cut about 14,000 jobs, or about 4% of its 350,000 employees, as part of a broader AI-driven restructuring. Company-wide layoffs could reach up to 30,000 people, making it the company’s largest ever layoff. ReutersThis was reported the day before Amazon’s announcement.
“What we need to remember is that the world is changing rapidly. This generation of AI is the most transformative technology since the Internet, enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before,” Beth Galetti, Amazon’s senior vice president of people and experience, wrote in a memo.
Press Secretary Glasser mentioned luck To Mr. Galetti’s memo in response to the company’s AI-related staff reductions.
In an open letter, employees said that those who have not been laid off are expected to produce more in less time, are faced with the obligation to build “wasteful” AI tools even for projects they don’t actually need, and are seeing huge investments in AI with little invested in helping them build their careers.
The letter also warned that converting Amazon’s doorbell camera company Ring to AI-first technology and reintroducing tools that allow law enforcement to request footage from the company’s feed “will place incredible power in the hands of increasingly authoritarian governments and a small number of companies willing to abandon the principles they claim in the race for AI supremacy.”
In the letter, the signatories demand that tech giants detail public plans to power all data centers with renewable energy, provide a seat at the table to consider the use and need for AI at an organizational level, and pledge that their AI will not be used for violence, surveillance, or mass deportation.
“The Amazon employees who signed this letter believe in building a better world, not building bunkers to bounce back from,” the authors wrote. “We want to see the benefits promised by AI. everyone You can play and rest more freely, spend time with family and friends, be inspired by nature, create, and feel safe in being who you are. ”
