Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon CEO says AI agents will soon reduce company's corporate workforce

cbsnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 124 posts

Re: Amazon CEO says AI agents will soon reduce company's corporate workforce

#41

Post by hiddencost »

daxfohl wrote: post #38

I 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 w…

Coordination costs in software are brutal.

More companies with smaller workforces would be better than fewer companies with larger workforces.

Re: Amazon CEO says AI agents will soon reduce company's corporate workforce

#43

Post by rwmj »

e40 wrote: post #31

Who does the Amazon CEO think will purchase their products, as income inequality increases and people are replaced with agents or robots?

As long as he has his New Zealand bunker ready to go he doesn't care. Who can he trust amongst his security team is the greater concern for him.

Re: Amazon CEO says AI agents will soon reduce company's corporate workforce

#45

Post by vajrabum »

ITB wrote: post #25
nullorempty wrote: post #4

> We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs. What he hopes for is to just reduce the number of people they employ. So the "more people doing other types of jobs" just makes the message more palatable. Suppose all companies follow the suite who is going to buy their crap?

Capitalism is the relentless pursuit of efficiency. It will work out.

American capitalism in the 2020s is no such thing. It's goosing this quarters numbers so the management can get their incentive bonuses and stock and buying buying business advantage from the legislature.

It's all in Adam Smith and economic history.

Re: Amazon CEO says AI agents will soon reduce company's corporate workforce

#46

Post by oblio »

sandspar wrote: post #12

One 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.

The thing is, there's no solution.

If AI truly comes in the current capitalistic system, there is no endgame. Ourobouros.

Re: Amazon CEO says AI agents will soon reduce company's corporate workforce

#47

Post by octo888 »

fsndz wrote: post #36

I 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-...

Klarna I feel also used the 700 fired due to AI and "oops now we're rehiring some" as a nice distraction from the ~2,100 total reduction that occurred from 2022 to 2024.

Re: Amazon CEO says AI agents will soon reduce company's corporate workforce

#48

Post by lucianbr »

hiddencost wrote: post #41
daxfohl wrote: post #38

I 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 w…

Coordination costs in software are brutal. More companies with smaller workforces would be better than fewer companies with larger workforces.

True, but the large companies are incentivised to not see or accept that. I really don't think Jassy is thinking that he wants Amazon to be smaller so it has lower coordination costs. It will also have a smaller market cap, you know?

Re: Amazon CEO says AI agents will soon reduce company's corporate workforce

#49

Post by slater »

ITB wrote: post #25
nullorempty wrote: post #4

> We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs. What he hopes for is to just reduce the number of people they employ. So the "more people doing other types of jobs" just makes the message more palatable. Suppose all companies follow the suite who is going to buy their crap?

Capitalism is the relentless pursuit of efficiency. It will work out.

Efficiency so high, they've convinced us to help them pull up the ladder!

Re: Amazon CEO says AI agents will soon reduce company's corporate workforce

#50

Post by sublinear »

I take more issue with the media spin than the actual story. Why does the discussion even mention software jobs when that's less than 4% of Amazon's workforce?

It makes more sense that Amazon would continue to push AI where it's already being used successfully. Devs may benefit from finding solutions quicker with AI, but it's never made sense to me why that would affect productivity per head or change hiring/firing rates.

Put another way: there are never enough devs and they write a lot of shitty code. AI writes even shittier code, but in subtly different ways and can write it even faster helping the dev iterate to better code.

The result is basically no change anywhere except a modest increase in quality. This is equivalent to, but cheaper than going on an epic quest to find the good devs and overpay them. Why is this a bad thing for like 99% of people who write code? There's basically no impact on their pay or ease of finding a job.

Post reply on HN