The recent round of Amazon corporate layoffs is probably not about AI. It's an expression of the company's brutal corporate culture, which is enabled by their use of the H-1B visa program.
I agree that AI is not yet able to take over jobs to account for these sweeping layoffs… However, I do think marshaling money and resources towards building out AI is one cause of these layoffs. Thoughts?
I think ideologically there is something to that: "We are investing in these tools, they are the future, they make it possible to do things with less labor, and so let's make the future now."
Materially, if the claim is that the eye-popping capex numbers on data center buildout are the reason, I'm more skeptical. This is not like investing in cost centers (much of its distribution network). They are selling new AWS capacity the second it comes online, and they've got billions in committed contracts as well. So as I understand it, they don't really need to cut costs elsewhere to make the data center investments happen.
Thanks for writing this, it clarifies a lot about the Amazon situation. It's really insightful how you're digging into the WARN notices to get to the truth, eching your earlier points about not jumping to conclusions regarding AI's immediate job displacment.
I agree that AI is not yet able to take over jobs to account for these sweeping layoffs… However, I do think marshaling money and resources towards building out AI is one cause of these layoffs. Thoughts?
I think ideologically there is something to that: "We are investing in these tools, they are the future, they make it possible to do things with less labor, and so let's make the future now."
Materially, if the claim is that the eye-popping capex numbers on data center buildout are the reason, I'm more skeptical. This is not like investing in cost centers (much of its distribution network). They are selling new AWS capacity the second it comes online, and they've got billions in committed contracts as well. So as I understand it, they don't really need to cut costs elsewhere to make the data center investments happen.
Thanks for writing this, it clarifies a lot about the Amazon situation. It's really insightful how you're digging into the WARN notices to get to the truth, eching your earlier points about not jumping to conclusions regarding AI's immediate job displacment.