Is Amazon cutting jobs to replace humans with AI? Here’s what experts say

Amazon has announced a massive round of global job cuts. Andrew Johnson on whether AI is to blame.

Amazon says its latest round of job cuts affecting 16,000 corporate positions worldwide is about streamlining its business, not replacing human workers with artificial intelligence. Experts say they’re not surprised.

The layoffs, announced Wednesday, mark the second major workforce reduction at the company in three months. While Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has openly discussed his expectation generative AI will reduce the company’s corporate workforce in the future, Amazon says the current cuts are aimed at reducing layers of management and bureaucracy following years of rapid expansion.

In a statement to CTV News, Amazon Canada would not provide details on how many Canadian workers may be affected. The announcement is being closely watched in Vancouver, where nearly 5,000 people work at Amazon’s downtown headquarters. “These are very important jobs. They’re high-paying jobs, and we’re very glad to have them in downtown Vancouver,” said city councilor Peter Meiszner.

Amazon is North America’s second-largest private employer. Its workforce doubled during the COVID-19 pandemic as millions of people, stuck at home, shifted to online shopping. Since then, it has been cutting costs aggressively.

“When things reopened, some of that activity shifted back to brick-and-mortar stores, and the online space needed to resize,” said Adam King, a Labour Studies professor at the University of Manitoba.

While he does acknowledge there are signs hiring has slowed in entry-level tech positions involving simple tasks that can be taken over by AI, King says. “I wouldn’t chalk this up to technological innovation displacing workers.”

Tech experts don’t believe the latest cuts at Amazon signal increasing adoption of AI at the expense of human jobs and caution that AI is not yet capable of broadly replacing complex corporate roles.

“When it first appeared, it was growing exponentially, it was getting smarter. But it hasn’t continued on that trajectory,” said Dan Riskin, CTV’s Science and Technology Expert. “A lot of the models have levelled off in terms of their abilities. If you interact with ChatGPT on a regular basis, you’ll know that it’s still just a bit stupid and it still makes some really dumb mistakes.”

For that reason, Riskin says employers would be wise to continue to invest in humans at the highest levels. “Humans, the best humans, are still better than AI. If you’re trying to build an organization with great people in it and you’ve got some key roles, AI hasn’t shown itself to be that good yet.”