Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said the company's workforce will shrink in the coming years as it adopts more generative artificial intelligence tools and agents.

Jassy wrote that employees should learn how to use AI tools and experiment and figure out “how to get more done with scrappier teams.”

The directive comes as Amazon has laid off more than 27,000 employees since 2022 and made several cuts this year. Amazon cut about 200 employees in its North America stores unit in January and a further 100 in its devices and services unit in May.

Amazon had 1.56 million full-time and part-time employees in its global workforce as of the end of March, according to financial filings. The company also employs temporary workers in its warehouse operations, along with some contractors.

  • Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.works
    5·
    5 days ago

    It absolutely wont. The only people who believe this are trying to sell AI, or repeating the ones selling AI.

    Nobody has a marketable AI product, nobody is making any money on AI, nobody is effectively using AI as a replacement for workers except in the content-slop industry. Not out of charity, but because LLMs can’t do the things that are being constantly promised.

    Amazon spend a hundred billion dollars on AI, and made 5 billion on it. That’s income, not profit. OpenAI is scraping together more capital because they’re going broke from not having a product to sell. Everyone using LLMs for anything right now is paying FAR under operating costs, and would stop immediately if they weren’t being funded by VC.

    • StonerCowboy@lemm.ee
      11·
      3 days ago

      Lmao you have no idea the Ai tools Amazon is using.

      It absolutely will replace SDEs

      • Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.works
        2·
        5 days ago

        Sure, a mechanical sorting machine using ML software is something completely different from what they’re talking about here though

        • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
          1·
          5 days ago

          Machine learning is a subset of AI, just as large language models are. They’re referring to text input machine learning as generative AI here:

          Amazon is using generative AI broadly across its internal operations, including in its fulfillment network where the technology is being deployed to assist with inventory placement, demand forecasting and the efficiency of warehouse robots, Jassy said.

          It’s only considered generative based on the user input method of text or speech. If it learned solely from observation, it would be considered machine learning, and if it used algorithms to create the most efficient model of itself, it would be considered deep learning. They’re all forms of AI though.