Right this moment I woke to search out that one more CEO has written one more memo about how head over heels in love they’re with AI. This time, the memo was from Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. It was posted publicly to Amazon’s web site on Tuesday.
Tech CEOs have been rattling off these love letters once in a while currently, they usually normally sound related: They speak about how the know-how is “transformative,” how chatbots will one way or the other profit prospects, the way it will make their firm extra “environment friendly” as a result of AI will allow them to put off extra people, and, most ominously, how “that is just the start.”
We get the gist: CEOs of enormous firms love the underside line and AI goes to do wonders for it.
However since Jassy is the CEO of the most important on-line retailer on the planet, his all-too-samey memo raises a burning query: Who’s going to purchase all of Amazon’s merchandise as soon as AI takes most of our jobs?
Jassy does admit within the memo that AI goes to price folks jobs at Amazon. Talking about how the corporate is rolling out AI brokers—artificially clever packages that can do the work an organization used to pay human employees to do—Jassy stated that Amazon “will want fewer folks doing a number of the jobs which can be being finished immediately, and extra folks doing different kinds of jobs.”
He goes on: “It’s exhausting to know precisely the place this nets out over time, however within the subsequent few years, we anticipate that this may cut back our whole company workforce as we get effectivity features from utilizing AI extensively throughout the corporate.”
Jassy is probably going proper that AI goes to cut back the entire company workforce, however not simply at Amazon. AI will cut back the entire workforce at many firms within the years forward, seemingly the vast majority of them.
How dangerous may issues get?
Estimates differ, however a 2023 report from funding financial institution Goldman Sachs stated that AI may threaten 300 million jobs over a 10-year interval. A 2017 report from McKinsey acknowledged that the automation of jobs may end in between 400 million and 800 million people being displaced by 2030.
“Automation” refers back to the course of by which code or robotics carry out a process {that a} human was as soon as required for, and infrequently at a a lot decrease working price than what an organization would want to pay a person.
So, once more, if each firm on this planet does what Amazon plans to do—substitute employees with AI—and that does result in a possible billion or so white-collar employees seeing their jobs evaporate, who precisely is Amazon going to promote to?
Sincere query.
As soon as AI is doing all of the work, and people can not earn a paycheck, who buys Amazon’s stuff? Does AI begin making an attempt to promote low cost items to different AI? I imply, absolutely AI has no use for garments, sporting items, or shampoo. And it doesn’t have any want for the books, films, or artwork prints that Amazon sells as a result of, let’s be sincere, AI fashions have already stolen most of that stuff. It is aware of them so properly that it will probably replicate them immediately.
AI could be a superb employee—and nice for a corporation’s backside line—but it surely’s the worst buyer an organization may ask for.
So if AI can’t purchase Amazon’s stuff, and human employees at the moment are unemployable as a result of AI took their jobs, who outlets at Amazon, then?
That’s one thing that not one of the CEOs—who appear so decided to be seen as AI thought leaders each time they rattle off certainly one of these AI love letters—ever deal with in these memos.
If there’s one factor that people can take coronary heart in—no less than for now—it’s that some firms which have already introduced their plans to go all in on AI on the expense of their staff’ livelihoods have confronted public backlash for it. However I believe that’s a “drawback” firms might resolve as AI advances.
As for what occurs to those firms’ backside strains as soon as customers can not afford to purchase their merchandise as a result of AI has taken their jobs? Properly, I’m nonetheless ready to listen to CEOs supply an answer to that drawback.
