Summarised by Centrist
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy recently told staff that AI would eliminate some of their jobs “in the next few years,” but gave no specifics on how many or when.
CNN’s Allison Morrow calls this “a modern spin on a strategy as old as time: Keep workers working by making them afraid of losing their jobs.”
Morrow argues that tech CEOs are fuelling anxiety under the guise of innovation, invoking AI as both inevitable and vaguely threatening, while carefully excluding themselves from the supposed job cuts.
“Many of these agents have yet to be built, but make no mistake, they’re coming, and coming fast,” Jassy warned staff, without clarifying what these “agents” would actually replace.
Morrow sees this more as marketing: “Make his core technology appear both inevitable and scary-powerful.”
“Notice that Jassy’s note didn’t say AI was coming for his job,” Morrow says. “Kinda seems like he might want to review what current AI is good at — producing OK-sounding memos.”
Morrow also draws attention to Microsoft’s own research, which shows workers are overwhelmed by hundreds of emails, meetings, pings and a spike in after-hours messaging.
Ironically, Microsoft says the solution to the “infinite workday” is more AI tools… even though those tools are partly what caused the problem in the first place.
