Amazon CEO Andy Jassy revealed in an email to all employees on Tuesday that the company is accelerating the deployment of generative artificial intelligence (AI), which will impact some positions and is expected to reduce the overall number of corporate employees.

In his memo, Jassy noted that the application of generative AI is not only in Amazon's products but also "further inclined" toward internal processes. Amazon is currently developing or has completed over a thousand generative AI projects. He used Alexa+ as an example to illustrate the company's future direction, although Amazon's Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) emphasized that further work on security protection is needed before its official release. Alexa+ is currently being tested, but no specific release date has been announced yet.

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"Currently, more than one million people can use this service, and we are very satisfied with customer feedback—As business scales up, we have received many great responses and learned a lot from them," said an Amazon spokesperson. "We are continuously rolling out this service to customers at a faster pace and look forward to making it widely available to a broader audience this summer."

However, Jassy admitted that the widespread use of generative AI and agent programs will "change the way we work." He predicted that as efficiency improves, the company will need fewer hands for some current tasks while requiring more personnel for other types of work. "We expect that the widespread use of AI across the company will improve efficiency, which will reduce the total number of company employees," he added.

Facing potential job changes, Jassy encouraged employees to actively learn new skills, attend seminars, and try AI technologies. He mentioned that AWS Skill Builder offers free AI-related courses for Amazon employees, some of which have practical value. Jassy used his own experience of joining Amazon in 1997 as an example to emphasize the importance of learning and adapting to new technologies. He believed that those who learn how to use generative AI will "be in a favorable position to make a significant impact and help us reshape the company."

Although Jassy's memo did not mention immediate layoff plans, Amazon's return-to-office policy and previous rounds of large-scale layoffs (at least 27,000 employees cut since 2021) indicate the company's ongoing efforts in cost control and efficiency improvement. Against the backdrop of economists generally believing that generative AI will not replace jobs on a large scale or harm wages, Amazon's move has drawn wide attention regarding the future impact of its AI strategy. At the same time, many employees expressed dissatisfaction with the mandatory five-day return-to-work policy, which may put the company at risk of talent loss.

In the long term, there are different views within the industry about the impact of AI on the job market. For example, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei predicted that half of white-collar jobs might disappear within the next five years, a view that particularly raised concerns among programmers and entry-level security personnel groups.