Embrace AI or else? Amazon CEO warns AI will reduce corporate workforce in coming years

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has warned employees that artificial intelligence will reduce the company’s corporate workforce over the next few years, urging staff to “embrace AI” or risk being left behind. The memo signals a major shift for one of the world’s largest employers, which directly employs over 1.5 million people globally, as tech giants increasingly prioritize AI-driven efficiency over human labor.

What you should know: Jassy explicitly told Amazon employees that AI adoption will lead to workforce reductions through efficiency gains.

• “We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs,” Jassy wrote in Tuesday’s memo.
• “In the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.”
• About 350,000 of Amazon’s employees work in office roles, representing the segment most likely to be affected by AI automation.

The big picture: Amazon is deploying AI across virtually every aspect of its operations, from product listings to advertising, as the company positions itself for an AI-driven future.

• Half a million sellers on Amazon’s platforms are already using the company’s AI tools to create product information.
• Advertisers are increasingly adopting Amazon’s AI offerings for campaign optimization.
• Jassy expects AI to eventually handle routine tasks like shopping and daily chores through automated agents that are “coming fast.”

Why this matters: Amazon’s frank acknowledgment of AI-driven job cuts reflects a broader industry trend that could reshape the global employment landscape.

• As the second-largest employer in the US after Walmart, Amazon’s workforce decisions have significant economic ripple effects.
• The company’s embrace of AI automation could pressure competitors to follow suit, accelerating job displacement across the tech sector.

What experts are saying: Industry leaders are increasingly warning about AI’s potential to eliminate white-collar jobs at an unprecedented scale.

• Dario Amodei, CEO of AI firm Anthropic, told Axios that the technology “could wipe out half of entry-level white collar jobs.”
• Geoffrey Hinton, known as the “Godfather of AI,” argued this technology is fundamentally different from previous innovations: “If it can do all mundane human intellectual labor, then what new jobs is it going to create? You’d have to be very skilled to have a job that it couldn’t just do.”

The competitive context: Amazon joins a growing list of tech companies investing heavily in AI while simultaneously reducing human workforces to capture efficiency gains.

• Companies across the tech sector have been pouring resources into AI development, driven by advances that enable chatbots to generate code, images, and text with minimal human oversight.
• Unlike previous technological shifts that created new job categories, experts warn AI’s broad capabilities may eliminate more positions than it creates.