Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says artificial intelligence is already changing how labor gets done across the economy, particularly in white-collar jobs where companies historically scaled by simply adding more people.
In a recent interview with The Information, Jassy says AI is not a job-killer, but a force that will compress labor needs by automating large portions of routine work across technical and knowledge-based roles.
“And my own view is that in the short term, quite a short to medium term, that you will find that a number of jobs that we’ve just thrown people at over the last 20 years, all of us in the industry, you’ll find more of those jobs are able to be supplemented, work done by AI, whether it’s coding or customer service or research or analytics. I mean, even if you think about, you know, building a spreadsheet, it’s going to be really different, I think, than the way we’ve done it the last 20 years.”
Despite the change in labor needs, Jassy pushes back on the idea that AI will eliminate entire categories of work, believing instead that it will raise the baseline productivity of employees.
“But at the same time, what I think is going to happen is two things. One is, I think there are going to be lots of people in all those jobs. It’s not going to wipe out all the jobs. There are going to be lots of people in those jobs, and they’re going to start every single one of their initiatives at a much more advanced starting point because AI is doing a lot of the road work that we’ve all had to do. And so I still think you’re going to have a lot of people in all those areas.”
Jassy appears to suggest that AI will do the foundational work in the roles mentioned, which means fewer junior roles and entry points. ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood shares the same view, believing that young people are getting left behind amid the tech revolution.
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