Amazon is telling its employees to brace for fewer jobs in the future as artificial intelligence takes over more tasks.
In a blog post shared with staff, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy wrote, “As we roll out more Generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done. We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs.”
Jassy said that while it’s still unclear how everything will play out, the company expects its corporate workforce to shrink over the next few years.
“Many of these agents have yet to be built, but make no mistake, they’re coming, and coming fast,” Jassy said.
The reason? Efficiency gains from using AI widely.
He also framed AI as a tool that should be embraced “as teammates we can call on at various stages of our work, and that will get wiser and more helpful with more experience.”
Wider Warnings Across the Tech Industry
This shift at Amazon reflects a broader conversation happening across the tech industry.
In May, Dario Amodei, CEO of AI company Anthropic, said on CNN that AI could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs and push unemployment as high as 20% in as little as five years.
He gave no specific data to back this up.
Amodei also said, “AI is starting to get better than humans at almost all intellectual tasks,” and suggested that the technology could create an economic boom alongside mass job losses.
But experts say that vision doesn’t make much sense.
Experts Push Back on AI Job Loss Predictions
Labor economist Aaron Sojourner told CNN that for the economy to grow while unemployment skyrockets, labor productivity would need to jump by 30%.
He called that “a wildly unprecedented vision.”
Others, like entrepreneur Mark Cuban, say past tech shifts have replaced jobs but created new ones too.
“Someone needs to remind the CEO that at one point there were more than [2 million] secretaries… New companies with new jobs will come from AI and increase TOTAL employment,” he wrote on Bluesky.
Skepticism Around AI Job Hype
Critics say tech CEOs are hyping worst-case scenarios to sell their products.
CNN’s Allison Morrow called Amodei’s comments part of the “AI hype machine,” and pointed out that companies like Anthropic profit from sounding the alarm while building the very tools they claim will cause problems.
Jassy didn’t go that far, but Amazon’s message is clear: AI is changing how work gets done.
And for many corporate employees, that may result in fewer job opportunities in the near future.
What happens next will depend on how businesses, workers, and government leaders choose to handle these fast changes.