Amazon’s Andy Jassy Warns AI Will Drive Some Job Cuts & Create New Roles

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has warned again that the advent of AI will inevitably reduce headcount in certain roles, even as it creates new opportunities, reaffirming a message he sent to the company’s 1.5 million employees last month.

In an interview with CNBC’s Jim Cramer, Jassy said that as AI systems and software agents automate routine tasks, “there will be fewer people doing some of the jobs that the technology actually starts to automate,” though he stressed that “there’s going to be other jobs.”

Jassy told viewers that the impact on Amazon’s workforce will unfold gradually over the coming years as generative AI and other advanced tools boost efficiency.

“It will be hard to know exactly where this nets out over time,” he said, echoing the cautionary tone of his internal memo, but added that employees will be freed from rote work and empowered to build more innovative services at faster pace.

His comments resonate across the technology sector, where executives from Salesforce, Shopify and Microsoft have publicly encouraged staff to embrace AI as a productivity partner.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff recently estimated that AI now performs 30 to 50% of tasks at his company, while Klarna’s CEO disclosed this May that investments in AI, combined with natural attrition, contributed to a 40 percent reduction in headcount at the online lender.

Sam Altman’s Statement

OpenAI’s Sam Altman has gone further, declaring in a blog post that “we are past the event horizon; the take‑off has started,” signaling that AI’s ability to handle predictable, high‑volume work is already reshaping industries from logistics to legal services.

Although history shows that technological revolutions displace some roles even as they spawn new ones, the speed and scale of AI’s rise are testing companies’ capacity to retrain and redeploy their workforces.

As Amazon and its peers race to integrate intelligent automation, executives and policymakers alike are grappling with how best to balance workforce reductions in certain areas against the promise of novel career paths and higher‑value work, a challenge that is likely to define the next chapter of the digital economy.