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

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

#91

Post by drewbeck »

satyrun wrote: post #68
arnonejoe wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what he is trying to say is if there is mass unemployment as a result of "all companies following suit", no one will be able to buy their products.

Blue collar workers won't have this problem for a very long time. It seems obvious that many white collar workers today will have to do something involving physical labor at some point in the future. I expect I will be facing this in my mid 50s. Really not ideal timing.

Maybe not with AI, but blue collar workers suffered in the same way bc of job flight and automation in decades past.

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

#92

Post by drewbeck »

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.

You’ve mistaken a sometimes-emergent property of the system with the fundamental rules of the system itself.

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

#94

Post by supertrope »

xenihn wrote: post #20

I'm going to pick an arbitrary number here that's loosely based on top 100 tech companies by market cap. If you are working for a company that employs at least 1000 full-time engineers, I think you should consider joining a team where every project involves AI in some way, if you aren't already on one. Whether its owning AI tooling, or developing client features that use AI directly, or even just prototyping AI conce…

Sounds like the long term trend of companies hollowing themselves out by prioritizing sales and cutting “cost center” activities like engineering the product, manufacturing, support, R&D, and the overhead in running a company.

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

#95

Post by conartist6 »

jppope wrote: post #26

I 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…

Yes, your point about revenue is very astute

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

#96

Post by fsndz »

octo888 wrote: post #47
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.

exactly !

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

#97

Post by cyanydeez »

jppope wrote: post #26

I 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…

Reduce it further: they have a cudgel to manipulate lower salaries with.

So it really doesnt matter whats realistic. They want cheaper workers to live in fear.

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

#98

Post by another_twist »

CharlesW wrote: post #71
another_twist wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curious, where are these numbers from ?

These are realistic (IMHO, of course) projections based on studies I've helped with and conversations I've had with my network. Naturally, the impact will vary enormously based on roles, and the timelines won't be evenly distributed. But these kinds of projections aren't unusual at all — if you use the Deep Research capabilities of modern models to build a list of public projections for your own research, you'll see…

I see and are these studies public ? Could we see the data and the methodology here ? Thing is there are benchmarks to judge software engineering capability of AI. I am more interested in how the jobless predictions made ?

I understand all the theory but it can largely be condensed into - AI makes workforce more efficient so you need less people. But there are no good studies afaik that measure AI powered efficiency and surely nothing about how to model workforce reduction due to AI. I am curious what the science is behind these opinions.

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

#99

Post by another_twist »

CharlesW wrote: post #85
diamond559 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What studies? MIT estimates only 5% of the workforce can be replaced long term. What tasks are you employees using AI on, CMU shows the best llm only has a ~30% success rate for basic business tasks. Are you a vibe coding start up or something?

> MIT estimates only 5% of the workforce can be replaced long term. The model by MIT's Daron Acemoglu estimates that ~5% of U.S. tasks can be completely and profitably automated by AI within ten years. It was expressly not a head-count forecast, and didn't attempt to quantify the headcount reduction that AI augmentation could enable.

https://economics.mit.edu/sites/default/files/2024-04/The%20...

Is this the MIT paper ? In this one the TFP is 0.55%

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

#100

Post by thunky »

burnte wrote: post #65
jppope wrote: post #26

I 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…

True, however the pitch itself is telling. They're not saying "we're expecting AI to boost the productivity of our employees by 20% with no increase in labor costs." They're saying "we're going to spend less on humans" because investors are more ok with spending money on machines than people. That's the problem, they're not looking at how AI enhances people, they're looking at how it can eliminate people.

Why would you expect different?

Companies don't exist to benefit their employees (or their customers).

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