AI, Amazon, Job Cuts, and Artificial Intelligence Influence Across Industries

Nobody loves to hear about people losing their jobs. Yet, sometimes it’s necessary. The reason why people are freaking out due to Amazon releasing 14,000 people is not because it is unfair, but because it appears to be influenced by artificial intelligence. The CEO of the company claims that the number of people being laid off due to AI will grow in coming years, and the reactions have been anything but positive.

The stories about AI influencing the human workforce have been circling around for a while now, and Amazon was the first company to pull the trigger on massive layoffs. While the number of 14,000 people who have lost their jobs is huge, it is not extraordinary if you look at the number of people Amazon is employing in the first place. The bad news is that this number will grow to 30,000 in the coming months.

 Amazon CEO Andrew Jassy stated that this number of layoffs is just the beginning. When talking about AI, he claimed that many people will lose their jobs due to artificial intelligence automation, and that it’s the reality we’re better off accepting sooner rather than later. As if that was not enough, he is adamant that Amazon workers also need to put their foot forth in reporting any case of unnecessary bureaucracy and inefficiencies within the company all of which would lead to cost savings down the road.

Are These News Really That New?

When the news about Amazon releasing workers hit the newsstands most of us wondered just what had happened. It is not news if you’re close to the Seattle, Washington based company that already said that close to 30,000 people are going to be released in coming months. People close to the matter weren’t surprised by the news even a little bit. Bet Galetti, who is the senior vice president of people experience and technology at Amazon said that the company’s workforce is being reduced by 14,000 employees. What rarely is reported is the fact that the company is cooperating with people affected, all of which are being offered a 90 days deadline of trying to find a new job internally.

Amazon’s Reasoning

Yes, AI might be part of the problem, but is seen more of a solution by the higher ups in the company. The company wants to reduce overhead. Also, they’re not firing people out of sheer malice and AI influence. They’ve been hiring too many people during the COVID-19 era where the company’s requirements were through the roof. Now, after years of recovering, the society is finally back on track, and the number of Amazon workers required is lowered, thus the cuts were necessary from the pure business side.

Most of us are aware that the number of online shoppers grew during the coronavirus years, and companies such as Amazon have reacted to the market shift by hiring more people to handle a bigger workload. The demand was so massive that Amazon was binge hiring left and right. Today, when the situation all over the world has normalized, the company was quick to access their employees and notice whose workplaces are no longer necessary. Back in the COVID-19 heyday, Amazon was hiring as much as 1,400 new workers a day. In 2020, during a 9 month span Amazon hired 427,300 new employees. In less than a year, they’ve almost doubled the number of their employees on a global level. When you look at the numbers from that perspective, 14,000 people are just a drop of water in the sea.

Of course, the business side of it is clear, but the casual onlookers have been putting too much blame on artificial intelligence. While Amazon is not hiding that they’re working on leveraging the biggest technological advancement since the invention of the Internet to their favour, these layoffs have little to do with AI.

How AI Affected Other Industries?

Artificial intelligence is such a revolutionary piece of technology that from our perspective it is hard to claim that it only has negative influence as it’s represented in the media these days. Let’s take the online gambling industry as a good example. Online casinos and sportsbooks such as Stake have leveraged AI to benefit themselves but the players too. The data representation you’ll find on their website is now more precise than ever. Machine learning has done wonders for match predictions, and odds shifting. Betting patterns are now tracked in real time, reducing the possibility of fraud. New games are created with the help of AI, and the games are now more provably fair than ever. When paired with blockchain technology, players these days do not have to trust the casino; they can check the trustworthiness.

Personalized bets, and AI chat support are just the tip of the iceberg. Things such as chatbots, live match predictions, and access to live sports streams that offer statistics and predictions in real time thanks to AI tech are more than well accepted across the industry. The best part is that AI is not only affecting this industry on a positive note. In healthcare we’re not too far from having AI predicting symptoms and diseases better than doctors. Finances have been relying on artificial intelligence for some time now in predicting market shifts with smarter algorithms that are also present in retail and gaming. The gaming industry already flourishes through smarter than ever NPCs that were the mood killers back in the day.

If you move onto the fields such as education, manufacturing, transportation, agriculture, and entertainment, AI is already making massive strides. Yes, there are negatives, but positives outshine them so far. The only reason why Amazon is now in the news, and portrayed negatively through an AI prism is because the number of 14,000 that could rise through 30,000 looks massive out of context. With a tad bit of context we can portray a different picture.

How Significant are These Job Cuts?

First of all, the number of people laid off down on the field is insignificant. The majority of layoffs are coming through the company’s corporate departments. It is hard to envision it, but the number of people who work in Amazon’s corporate division is almost bigger than their number of service workers, craftsmen, labourers, and technicians. These groups haven’t been affected so far.

Also, what matters is taking a look at the bigger picture. Do you know how many people Amazon employs? The number is slightly over 1.55 million dispersed all over the world. The number of released workers that stems from 14,000 to 30,000 is only 4% of Amazon’s entire workforce employed in their corporate offices. It is of little significance on the great scale of things. While the numbers don’t lie, it is true that this is the biggest job cut in the world at the moment and the biggest at this particular company since 2022. Three years ago, 27,000 employees were laid off.

It’s All Part of The Announced Inefficiency Initiative

People close to the industry and the company itself knew that layoffs were on the way. Amazon’s CEO, Jassy, stated that the company will attempt to increase its efficiency by cutting down on the number of managers. The bureaucracy within the company has become a burden on the other branches of the company throughout the years. It all started with the so called Bureaucracy Mailbox that was a direct line between Amazon employees and the company’s higher ups to report any case of excessive processes and unnecessary bureaucracy.

So far, the initiative has been a moderate success. There were around 1,500 responses that have led to 450 changes in the processes and the way the company conducts them. The work on reducing bureaucracy has been underway for a while now, and even bigger shifts are expected before the end of 2025. The senior leadership within the company is looking to increase the employee to managers ratio by at least 15% in the last quarter of the ongoing year. The goal is to have more workers working under lesser number of managers, which is at this point seen as the biggest inefficiency issue the company has, where the number of managers is just slightly lower than the number of overall employees working under them, and as situation such as that is seen as not sustainable in the long run if the company is to continue making record profits.

How is AI to be Blamed for It?

There is no direct answer to this question. Is Ai to be blamed for it? Well, yes, it could be. To a degree, at least. The AI technology has been on a roll out throughout the Amazon company on different levels. Just a few months ago, the company’s CEO, Jassy stated that the more a company relies on AI, the less workers it’s going to require in certain departments. It’s not that all workers will be replaceable but more that less of them will be required for certain actions.

Of course, this comes as no surprise, it’s just that no major companies have come out and stated the obvious so blatantly. In the same statement, Jassy said that the way Amazon conducts its work will inevitably change with the introduction of more sophisticated AI technologies. The work being done one way today, will be done differently in the foreseeable future, concluded the Amazon’s CEO.

The things have been set in motion, and they’ve been planned for a while now, but Jassy also said that it’s hard to predict precisely when the world and the company will change permanently. Whether it will be in a few months or a few years, at one point Amazon’s efficiency will be increased through AI, and the total corporate workforce will be reduced. The AI revolution at Amazon is aimed at all parts of the company, but it will start with what can be done faster and better through technology at bureaucracy levels.

While people are quick to blame AI, it is no secret that many work positions have been automated for decades now. The issue AI poses to some individuals is that we’ve all been exposed to it one way or another due to overall global connectivity via smartphones and internet. It is an easy scapegoat to aim our dissatisfaction at. The harsh truth is that AI will improve automation even more than it has been so far, and it will inevitably reduce the need for some work posts. 

While for many of us it comes to having work or not having it in the eve of the AI boom, for major groups such as Amazon it is also about investment. Such companies have invested millions into developing AI both in home and pouring money into startups. Now, the time has come to reap some of the benefits of those investments. Yes, a few jobs will be lost in the process, but we have been slowly moving toward that future, and accepting it today is better than waiting for it to unfold in the future and not being prepared at all.

The Jobs Endangered The Most by AI

As we said, AI is here, we’re aware of the changes it brings, so there’s no excuses not to be prepared. Major companies such as Microsoft have already done research and shortlisted the jobs that are vulnerable to AI at the moment and are in danger of being fully replaced in the future. The most notable ones include technical writers, proofreaders, market research analysts, telemarketers, news analysts, writers and authors, and journalists. 

These jobs are in danger, but at the same time, we can’t be sure of the direction AI will go in the future. There is no technology that can replace humans at so many levels that it’s hard to count. Also, there are many experts claiming that Ai is a bubble waiting to burst, and that the dreadful future many are predicting is not close but not even a possibility at the moment. As far as we’re concerned it’s one of those wait and see situations, where it’s best to be prepared, but let it play out.