Over 1,000 Amazon employees have anonymously signed an open letter warning that the company’s “all-costs-justifying, lightning-fast approach to AI development” could cause “staggering damage to our democracy, our jobs, and our planet,” an internal advocacy group announced Wednesday.
Four members of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice told WIRED that they started asking employees to sign the letter last month. After reaching its initial goal, the group on Wednesday revealed the positions of Amazon employees who signed on, and said more than 2,400 supporters from other organizations, including Google and Apple, are also participating.
Amazon’s internal supporters include high-level engineers, senior product leaders, marketing managers, and warehouse staff across many departments within the company. A senior engineering manager who has worked at Amazon for more than 20 years said he signed because he believes the created “race” to build the best AI has given management the power to trample on workers and the environment.
“The current generation of AI has become a drug that companies like Amazon are obsessed with, using it as a cover to fire employees and using the free money to pay for data centers for AI products that no one is buying,” said the employee, who, like others profiled in this article, requested anonymity for fear of retaliation from his boss.
Amazon, like other big tech companies, is in the midst of investing billions of dollars in building new data centers to train and run generative AI systems. This includes tools to help employees write code and consumer-facing services like Amazon’s shopping chatbot Rufus. It’s easy to see why Amazon is pursuing AI. Last month, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced that Rufus plans to increase Amazon’s sales by $10 billion a year. “It just keeps getting better and better,” he said.
AI systems require large amounts of electricity, forcing utilities to turn to coal-fired power plants and other carbon-emitting energy sources to support the data center boom. The open letter calls on Amazon to abandon carbon fuel sources in its data centers, prohibit the use of its AI technology to carry out surveillance or mass deportations, and stop forcing employees to use AI in their work. “We, the undersigned Amazon employees, have grave concerns about 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 states.
