The unpleasant side of Artificial Intelligence: Amazon cuts 14,000 corporate staff and blames the robots
Amazon has shocked the corporate world by announcing a huge cull of approximately 14,000 corporate jobs across its global offices, in a clear sign that the tech industry’s love affair with Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming at the cost of human employees.
The Seattle-based giant, which boasts a staggering 1.5 million staffers worldwide (mostly working in its warehouses), is slashing around 4% of its white-collar workforce. The move is the latest, and potentially the largest, in CEO Andy Jassy’s multi-year campaign to slash spending and overhaul its famously bloated corporate culture.
In an email to staff, Amazon’s executives claimed the drastic cuts were necessary to make the company leaner and less bureaucratic as it shifts its focus entirely onto its largest stake, generative AI.
Are the robots coming for your job?
Senior Vice President of People Experience and Technology Beth Galetti delivered the chilling corporate rationale, describing AI as "the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the Internet." The message is clear: if the job can be done by a machine, Amazon will not be paying a person to do it.
This purge is affecting units right across the corporate map, including cloud services, video games, HR, and communications. While analysts initially suggested the total could be as high as 30,000, the current confirmed figure of 14,000 is still a big blow to thousands of families.
The job losses are a sobering sign that the post-pandemic hiring boom - when Amazon quickly expanded its workforce to cope with the surge in online shopping demand - is definitely over. Now, a climate of fear is sweeping through corporate corridors as executives try to make their companies leaner.
Profit Before People
While Amazon has framed the layoffs as a forward-looking strategy, others are blaming the company’s bottom line. The cuts follow similar fierce purges at rivals Meta and Microsoft, which are also blaming the necessity of focusing on AI for their own mass layoffs.
Some analysts suggest that the cuts are really about pulling different levers to increase profitability, especially at a time when top-line growth may be slowing. In short, why pay staff when you can use AI to deliver greater productivity?
CEO Andy Jassy has been brutally direct about this new reality, telling staffers earlier this year that the embrace of AI "will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today." This grim reality will no doubt get worse as Amazon continues to invest billions into AI development and cloud infrastructure – it’s invested an eye-watering $118 billion this year alone.
Despite the corporate cull, Amazon is still planning to hire 250,000 workers for its lower-paid fulfilment and transportation units for the upcoming holiday shopping rush. This disparity highlights a worrying trend: the massive corporation is happy to hire temporary warehouse hands but is clearing out its expensive, white-collar, corporate ranks.
Companies focused on cutting costs to boost their profits will prioritise AI over human employees. Indeed, Amazon reported its latest financial results this week, and investors were pleased with the increase in growth and profit numbers. However, for those laid off and those who may be in the crosshairs for future redundancies, the cost has already been too high.