Amazon is determined to use AI for everything – even when it slows down work

## Summary
She doesn’t take issue with the AI tools themselves, but rather the company’s logic in pushing all employees to use them daily. “You don’t look at the problem and go, ‘How do I use this hammer I have?’ she said. “You look at it and go, ‘Is this a problem for a hammer or something else?’” ‘I wish I could push ChatGPT off a cliff’: professors scramble to save critical thinking in an age of AI Read more More than a half a dozen current and former Amazon corporate employees, in roles ranging from software engineer to user experience researcher to data analyst, told the Guardian that Amazon is pressing employees to integrate AI across all aspects of their work, even though these workers say this push is hurting productivity. Amazon is the second-largest employer in the US and has long influenced workplace practices across both white collar and blue collar industries . “There’s a lot of talk among corporate employees about how some of these practices – about performance, surveillance and monitoring – are somewhat imported from the warehouse and the drivers space, and that it is Amazon expanding this model of labor to white collar workers,” Jack, a software engineer at Amazon for more than a decade, said. “It does feel like we’re at the vanguard of a new stage in employer relations with the advent of AI.” “Half-baked” tools and “more work for everyone” While Amazon has a reputation for being a tough place to work , the impact of its AI campaign has pressurized its workplace, workers said. “It’s worse now,” said Denny, a software engineer, who works in the retail space at the company. “If we don’t pivot ... then we risk becoming obsolete and being let go in the next layoff.” Whenever there’s a task at hand, the biggest question managers ask is whether it can be done faster with AI tools, according to Denny. The AI generated code was full of slop . “In the end, my guess is that the developer cycle is not going to change, and [could] even be potentially longer,” said Denny. “This pressure to use [AI] has resulted in worse quality code, but also just more work for everyone.” Denny was one of several workers who told the Guardian they’re pressured to use an overwhelming array of AI tools, many of which were hastily developed in internal hackathons and then have to spend time answering surveys about their experience with the tools. “I would get shown these random tools by my manager who’d be like: ‘Why don’t you try using this thing?’, and it was just the result of a hackathon,” said Denny. Workers said managers at Amazon have a dashboard where they track their team members’ AI use, including if they’re using certain tools and how often they do so. ( The Information first reported this in February.) Jack, the software developer who’s worked at Amazon for more than a decade, said the company also launched a different dashboard, which the Guardian has viewed, so teams could see their generative AI adoption, engagement and depth of usage. “Every team treats it differently,” he said, with some managers using it with a goal of getting at least 80% of their team using AI tools weekly.

## Article Content
Illustration: Félix Decombat/The Guardian
View image in fullscreen
Illustration: Félix Decombat/The Guardian
Amazon is determined to use AI for everything – even when it slows down work
Corporate employees said Amazon’s race to roll out AI is leading to surveillance, slop and ‘more work for everyone’.
When Dina, a software developer based in New York, joined
Amazon
two years ago, her job was to write code. Now, it’s mostly fixing what artificial intelligence breaks.
The internal AI tool she’s expected to use, called Kiro, frequently hallucinates and generates flawed code, she says. Then she has to dig through and correct the sloppy code it creates, or just revert all changes and start again. She says it feels like “trying to AI my way out of a problem that AI caused”.
“I and many of my colleagues don’t feel that it actually makes us that much faster,” Dina said. “But from management, we are certainly getting messaging that we have to go faster, this will make us go faster, and that speed is the number one priority.”
Just days after speaking to the Guardian, Dina was laid off.
Lisa, a supply chain engineer who has worked at Amazon for over a decade, says that AI tools at work have been helpful to her only in about one in every three attempts. And even then, she often finds issues and has to consult with colleagues to verify and correct their results, which takes up more time than if she’s done the task without AI.
She doesn’t take issue with the AI tools themselves, but rather the company’s logic in pushing all employees to use them daily. “You don’t look at the problem and go, ‘How do I use this hammer I have?’ she said. “You look at it and go, ‘Is this a problem for a hammer or something else?’”
‘I wish I could push ChatGPT off a cliff’: professors scramble to save critical thinking in an age of AI
Read more
More than a half a dozen current and former Amazon corporate employees, in roles ranging from software engineer to user experience researcher to data analyst, told the Guardian that Amazon is pressing employees to integrate AI across all aspects of their work, even though these workers say this push is hurting productivity. They say Amazon is rolling out AI use in a haphazard way while also tracking their AI use, and they’re worried the company is essentially using them to train their eventual bot replacements. All of this, they said, is demoralizing. The Guardian granted these workers anonymity because of their fear of professional repercussions.
“We have hundreds of thousands of corporate employees in a wide range of roles across many different businesses, each of which is using AI in different ways to learn about what works best for their use cases,” Montana MacLachlan, an Amazon spokesperson, said. “While different employees may have different experiences, what we hear from the vast majority of our teams is that they’re getting a lot of value out of the AI tools that they use day-to-day.”
This pressure comes as Amazon has laid off 30,000 workers in the last four months –
nearly 10% of its roughly 350,000 corporate workforce
. Its cuts are part of a wave of recent AI-connected tech layoffs, including at
Block
,
Pinterest
and
Autodesk
. Exactly how much these companies will be able to rely on AI to replace headcount is unclear, and each company has given an array of sometimes contradictory reasons for reductions. Jack Dorsey, the Block CEO,
said outright that AI was behind his 40% staffing cuts
, while Pinterest and Autodesk said they were redirecting investments to AI. Amazon has waffled in explaining how AI factors into its layoff decisions, saying both that it would lead to reductions, but that recent cuts weren’t AI-driven. The company said in February it would spend some
$200bn this year
on AI infrastructure and announced a $50bn investment in OpenAI.
In a moment of rising anxiety about AI and work, the decisions Amazon makes around automation – and even how it talks about these shifts – will be consequential for not just its massive workforce, but for people in industries around the world. Amazon is the
second-largest employer in the US
and has
long influenced workplace practices
across both white collar and
blue collar industries
.
“There’s a lot of talk among corporate employees about how some of these practices – about performance, surveillance and monitoring – are somewhat
imported from the warehouse and the drivers
space, and that it is Amazon expanding this model of labor to white collar workers,” Jack, a software engineer at Amazon for more than a decade, said. “It does feel like we’re at the vanguard of a new stage in employer relations with the advent of AI.”
“Half-baked” tools and “more work for everyone”
While Amazon has a
reputation for being a tough place to work
, the impact of its AI campaign has pressurized its workplace, workers said. “It’s worse now,” said Denny, a software engineer, who works in the retail space at the company. “If we don’t pivot ... then we risk becoming obs

---

## Expert Analysis

### Merits
- MacLachlan said Amazon provides different training and resources for people across the company, including structured options. “Employees are encouraged to use the tools themselves as a learning mechanism, adopting a learn-as-you-work approach that is proving to be one of the most practical and effective methods of AI adoption across the company,” she said.
- The inevitable result of AI tools getting deployed at scale is surveillance, according to Nick Srnicek, author of Platform Capitalism and a senior lecturer in digital economy at King’s College London. “The rushed deployment of AI means an uncritical expansion of surveillance since these tools increasingly require detailed knowledge of personal workflows and data,” he said. “To make them more capable means giving management greater insight and control over workers’ everyday activities.” Workers also said they suspect their career advancement is increasingly dependent on their enthusiastic embrace of AI. “We have promotion documents which have a template with questions like, ‘What has this person done?’, ‘What impact did it have?’ – and now it also has a question asking, ‘How [did] they leverage AI?’,” said Lisa. “I think they want to only keep the people who support this investment [in AI] and are going to try and filter out people who do not support it or have concerns about it.” The Wall Street Journal reported in late February that at Amazon, “managers do consider who is all-in on AI when it comes to promotions”. “While we expect employees to use resources – including AI – to make work more engaging and improve customers’ lives, we don’t instruct managers to consider AI utilization as part of our evaluation process,” said MacLachlan. “Instead, we focus on AI adoption and sharing best practices to celebrate innovation and operational efficiency gains across the company.” At the same time, Andy Jassy, Amazon CEO, hasn’t been shy about his AI expectations for his employees.

### Areas for Consideration
- The internal AI tool she’s expected to use, called Kiro, frequently hallucinates and generates flawed code, she says.
- She says it feels like “trying to AI my way out of a problem that AI caused”. “I and many of my colleagues don’t feel that it actually makes us that much faster,” Dina said. “But from management, we are certainly getting messaging that we have to go faster, this will make us go faster, and that speed is the number one priority.” Just days after speaking to the Guardian, Dina was laid off.
- She doesn’t take issue with the AI tools themselves, but rather the company’s logic in pushing all employees to use them daily. “You don’t look at the problem and go, ‘How do I use this hammer I have?’ she said. “You look at it and go, ‘Is this a problem for a hammer or something else?’” ‘I wish I could push ChatGPT off a cliff’: professors scramble to save critical thinking in an age of AI Read more More than a half a dozen current and former Amazon corporate employees, in roles ranging from software engineer to user experience researcher to data analyst, told the Guardian that Amazon is pressing employees to integrate AI across all aspects of their work, even though these workers say this push is hurting productivity.

### Implications
- She says it feels like “trying to AI my way out of a problem that AI caused”. “I and many of my colleagues don’t feel that it actually makes us that much faster,” Dina said. “But from management, we are certainly getting messaging that we have to go faster, this will make us go faster, and that speed is the number one priority.” Just days after speaking to the Guardian, Dina was laid off.
- She doesn’t take issue with the AI tools themselves, but rather the company’s logic in pushing all employees to use them daily. “You don’t look at the problem and go, ‘How do I use this hammer I have?’ she said. “You look at it and go, ‘Is this a problem for a hammer or something else?’” ‘I wish I could push ChatGPT off a cliff’: professors scramble to save critical thinking in an age of AI Read more More than a half a dozen current and former Amazon corporate employees, in roles ranging from software engineer to user experience researcher to data analyst, told the Guardian that Amazon is pressing employees to integrate AI across all aspects of their work, even though these workers say this push is hurting productivity.
- The Guardian granted these workers anonymity because of their fear of professional repercussions. “We have hundreds of thousands of corporate employees in a wide range of roles across many different businesses, each of which is using AI in different ways to learn about what works best for their use cases,” Montana MacLachlan, an Amazon spokesperson, said. “While different employees may have different experiences, what we hear from the vast majority of our teams is that they’re getting a lot of value out of the AI tools that they use day-to-day.” This pressure comes as Amazon has laid off 30,000 workers in the last four months – nearly 10% of its roughly 350,000 corporate workforce .
- Exactly how much these companies will be able to rely on AI to replace headcount is unclear, and each company has given an array of sometimes contradictory reasons for reductions.

### Expert Commentary
This article covers amazon, tools, employees topics. Notable strengths include discussion of amazon. Areas of concern are also raised. Readability: Flesch-Kincaid grade 0.0. Word count: 2515.