Who does the Amazon CEO think will purchase their products, as income inequality increases and people are replaced with agents or robots?
Amazon CEO says AI agents will soon reduce company's corporate workforce
31–40 of 124 posts
Re: Amazon CEO says AI agents will soon reduce company's corporate workforce
#32Because I continue to collect definitions of "agent", here's what Andy Jassy said in that memo: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/amazon-ceo-and... > Think of agents as software systems that use AI to perform tasks on behalf of users or other systems. Agents let you tell them what you want (often in natural language), and do things like scour the web (and various data sources) and summarize results, engag…
> Many of these agents have yet to be built, but make no mistake, they’re coming, and coming fast.
This is the same wishful thinking that AI companies are heavily marketing.
Nobody will want to use an "agent" that makes mistakes 60% of the time. Until the industry figures out a way to fix the problems that have plagued this technology since the beginning―which won't be solved by more compute, better data, or engineering hacks―this agentic future they've been promising is a pipe dream.
Re: Amazon CEO says AI agents will soon reduce company's corporate workforce
#33This headline is getting old and the story isn’t sticking with folks. They will do layoffs but because core business units are struggling and AWS has turned into a mess of disconnected services that are falling behind peers and they’re trying to clean up that bloated mess… not beside of “AI.” Amazon is also way behind tech peers on AI. These sorts of puff PR pieces don’t do much to shake that reality.
Anthropic is way behind? That might surprise a few people. https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/amazon-cons...
Amazon is just one of many investors in Anthropic.
Re: Amazon CEO says AI agents will soon reduce company's corporate workforce
#34I think the fair way to read any CEO's comments about AI reducing their workforce at this point has nothing to do with the capabilities of AI and more to do with the revenue outlook or the growth outlook. Basically, they are "narrative shopping" to save face with the stock market... and IMO it might work. Just a basic sniff test though - If AI enables developer productivity that would translate to more revenue, reduc…
It has more to do with the workforce wage demands and their output. Imagine if we all think that AI will get rid of our job at some point. We will work harder and demand less money do that work. All large corps did huge coordinated cuts in workforce in 2022-2023, and now there's this narrative. They are simply trying to get us to do more work for less money.
Re: Amazon CEO says AI agents will soon reduce company's corporate workforce
#35One thing I learned from COVID is that warnings never stick + once the wave hits it's MUCH larger than even the most dire warnings predicted. CEOs can warn about AI replacing jobs until they're blue in the face, but people won't listen. And when mass job losses finally arrive, people (including the CEOs) will be shocked and overwhelmed.
"Warn" lol. They're just telegraphing ahead of the layoffs they intend to do to capture more $$$, to whatever extent AI makes that possible. What are people supposed to do?
Your economic system is a joke
Re: Amazon CEO says AI agents will soon reduce company's corporate workforce
#36I am tired of seeing this. First the Klarna dude did it and it backfired. Now Andy... People fail to grasp the fact that building AI agents is no longer enough, you need to do more: https://medium.com/thoughts-on-machine-learning/building-ai-...
Re: Amazon CEO says AI agents will soon reduce company's corporate workforce
#37I think the fair way to read any CEO's comments about AI reducing their workforce at this point has nothing to do with the capabilities of AI and more to do with the revenue outlook or the growth outlook. Basically, they are "narrative shopping" to save face with the stock market... and IMO it might work. Just a basic sniff test though - If AI enables developer productivity that would translate to more revenue, reduc…
Even though I can fathom a world where AI tools could somehow lead to reduced head count, I think this is the only reasonable interpretation right now. After all, tech companies have been beating the "downsizing due to AI" drum for a really long time now, and for almost the entire time it has been very blatantly obvious bullshit.
Re: Amazon CEO says AI agents will soon reduce company's corporate workforce
#38I don't really get it. If AI is a force multiplier that suddenly makes your workforce way more productive, wouldn't you actually want to increase the size of your workforce to reap the maximum benefit?
There are only two reasons I can think not to. First, if AI can fully replace a human in a role. But it seems like we're a long way away from that. Second, if the added productivity leaves you with nothing to do. But we're in tech. There's always something new to do. If you're not doing new things as a company, you're getting replaced by those who are.
So it seems like a losing strategy to make your workforce cost reduction your primary concern when we could see the greatest workforce productivity gain in modern times.
Re: Amazon CEO says AI agents will soon reduce company's corporate workforce
#39I think the fair way to read any CEO's comments about AI reducing their workforce at this point has nothing to do with the capabilities of AI and more to do with the revenue outlook or the growth outlook. Basically, they are "narrative shopping" to save face with the stock market... and IMO it might work. Just a basic sniff test though - If AI enables developer productivity that would translate to more revenue, reduc…
Klarna tried this narrative shopping strategy first and it backfired: https://fsndzomga.medium.com/i-have-no-confidence-in-klarna-...
Re: Amazon CEO says AI agents will soon reduce company's corporate workforce
#40Waiting for AI to reduce CEOs.