Amazon axes 16,000 more jobs as companies keep replacing workers with AI

Amazon’s latest round of layoffs is set to hit 16,000 corporate employees starting Wednesday — with the tech titan suggesting artificial intelligence will do their work, instead.The firings come after Amazon said in October it was laying off 14,000 corporate workers, with the goal of trimming its 1.58 million-strong workforce by nearly 10%.The e-commerce giant has explicitly linked the layoffs to increased use of AI, particularly in corporate and technology functions.“Some may ask why we’re reducing roles when the company is performing well,” Amazon senior vice president Beth Galetti wrote in October.“This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the Internet, and it’s enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before (in existing market segments and altogether new ones),” she explained.“We’re convinced that we need to be organized more leanly, with fewer layers and more ownership, to move as quickly as possible for our customers and business.”People familiar with the matter told Reuters that the layoffs would hit teams across Amazon Web Services, retail, Prime Video and human resources, though details were not immediately known.The layoffs come amid high hopes for AI’s potential to boost productivity — and concern it could lead to widescale firings.AI killed some 55,000 jobs in the US last year, according to consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.On the consumer side of things, Amazon has embedded artificial intelligence across its core products, rolling out generative AI tools that handle shopping, voice interaction and task automation.The company has upgraded its virtual assistant Alexa with large language models, introduced an AI shopping assistant that answers complex product questions, and deployed internal AI assistants designed to boost employee productivity and software development.There are still occasional signs of human error.Amazon’s management on Tuesday mistakenly emailed...