Amazon Lays Off 14,000 Corporate Workers, Citing AI Push

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AI layoffs are here, full stop.
For a few years now, we’ve heard plenty of anecdotal evidence of people losing their jobs because of AI, but now we are seeing this happening at a massive scale from some of the biggest companies in the U.S..
Right, just today, Amazon announced that it will be laying off 14,000 corporate workers.
Now, of course, Amazon is a huge corporation, but that still represents a whopping 4% of its ENTIRE corporate workforce.
And this despite the fact that Amazon is already thriving ahead of the anticipated holiday boom.
Right, last quarter, the company reported $167.7 billion in revenue — a notable increase of 13%.
With the company’s net income also surging by 35% to $18.2 billion.
In fact, Amazon is doing so well that you even had Beth Galetti, the SVP of people experience and technology, addressing it in a memo to employees, writing:
“Some may ask why we’re reducing roles when the company is performing well. Across our businesses, we're delivering great customer experiences every day, innovating at a rapid rate, and producing strong business results.”
But then going on to make it clear that AI is the overarching force that drove this decision.
Pointing to a memo that Amazon’s CEO sent back in June that warned of upcoming staffing reductions due to efficiency gains from using A.I., with her adding:
“What we need to remember is that the world is changing quickly. This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the Internet, and it's enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before.”
And going on to argue that the layoffs are necessary for Amazon to continue, quote:
“shifting resources to ensure we’re investing in our biggest bets and what matters most to our customers’ current and future needs.”
Right, so that is obviously a major move from one of the most dominant companies in the country, but Amazon is far from alone here.
In the last few months, Microsoft has laid off a total of 15,000 employees, with experts widely speculating that the cuts were driven in large part by the company’s efforts to expand its investments in AI.
And last month, Salesforce also slashed its workforce by around 4,000 — a move that came mere months after the CEO said that AI was doing 50% of the work at the software company.
But this is just the beginning — plenty of other major corporations are also predicting AI-related layoffs in the near future.
Like Goldman Sachs, which sent a memo earlier this month warning employees to expect job cuts — despite skyrocketing profits — as the bank integrates AI into more of its operations.
Hell, we’re ALREADY seeing reports that Amazon is planning ANOTHER round of corporate layoffs in January after the busy holiday season.
So clearly, this is just the start of a much broader trend.
But this is all in its early stages, so we don’t fully know the long-term economic consequences of these actions, even as big companies plow forward with mass AI-related layoffs.
So this will be a big issue to watch, and for now, I’d really love to know what you make of all this.
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Produced by: Cory Ray, Philip DeFranco
Edited by: James Girardier, Maxwell Enright, Julie Goldberg, Christian Meeks, Matthew Henry
Art Department: William Crespo
Writing/Research: Lili Stenn, Philip DeFranco
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#Amazon #AI #ArtificialIntelligence