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

Amazon’s AI Push: A Productivity Paradox or a Stealth Workforce Reduction?

In the high-stakes world of tech innovation, Amazon has positioned itself at the forefront of artificial intelligence adoption. Yet, behind the scenes, a growing chorus of employees is raising alarms about the company’s aggressive AI push—claiming it’s not just hurting productivity but also fueling a climate of surveillance and fear.

When Dina, a New York-based software developer, joined Amazon two years ago, her role was straightforward: write code. Today, her days are consumed by fixing the very AI tools she’s expected to use. Amazon’s internal AI assistant, Kiro, often “hallucinates,” generating flawed code that Dina must painstakingly debug. “It feels like trying to AI my way out of a problem that AI caused,” she says. Just days after sharing her frustrations with the Guardian, Dina was laid off—a stark reminder of the high stakes in Amazon’s AI-driven transformation.

Lisa, a supply chain engineer with over a decade at Amazon, echoes similar sentiments. While she finds AI tools occasionally helpful, she estimates they’re useful only about one-third of the time. More often, she spends extra hours verifying and correcting AI-generated results, negating any time saved. “You don’t look at the problem and go, ‘How do I use this hammer I have?’” she explains. “You look at it and go, ‘Is this a problem for a hammer or something else?’”

These experiences are far from isolated. Over half a dozen current and former Amazon employees—from software engineers to UX researchers—told the Guardian that the company is pressuring workers to integrate AI into every aspect of their jobs, even when it’s counterproductive. They describe a workplace where AI tools are rolled out haphazardly, productivity is tracked obsessively, and employees fear they’re being trained to train their own replacements.

Amazon, for its part, maintains that its AI tools are driving value. “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,” said Montana MacLachlan, an Amazon spokesperson. “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.”

Yet, the numbers tell a more complicated story. In the last four months, Amazon has laid off 30,000 workers—nearly 10% of its 350,000-strong corporate workforce. These cuts are part of a broader trend of AI-connected layoffs across the tech industry, with companies like Block, Pinterest, and Autodesk also reducing headcount while touting AI-driven efficiencies.

The pressure to adopt AI is palpable. Employees report being bombarded with new tools, many of which are hastily developed in internal hackathons and then require workers to spend time evaluating and providing feedback. “I would get shown these random tools by my manager who’d be like: ‘Why don’t you try using this thing?’,” said Denny, a software engineer. “It was just the result of a hackathon.” He describes the tools as “half-baked” and unhelpful, adding to his workload rather than reducing it.

The surveillance aspect is equally troubling. Workers say managers have access to dashboards tracking AI usage, including which tools employees use and how often. Amazon’s internal feedback system, Amazon Connections, has shifted from asking about team dynamics to probing employees’ AI habits. “Are you using AI in your daily work? How often are you using it? Do you think that you’re a power user?” These are the kinds of questions now being asked, according to Maria, a former product manager who was laid off in January.

For many, the unspoken math is clear: if AI can automate away two hours of someone’s job, that translates into savings on that job title. “That’s the unspoken math of what they’re doing,” Maria says.

The human cost of this AI push is significant. Employees report feeling demoralized, surveilled, and anxious about their futures. “If we don’t pivot… then we risk becoming obsolete and being let go in the next layoff,” says Denny. For early-career workers like Sarah, a software engineer, the pressure to offload work to AI is stunting their learning and development.

As Amazon continues to invest billions in AI infrastructure, the question remains: is this a genuine effort to innovate, or a stealthy way to reduce headcount and increase surveillance? For now, the workers caught in the middle are left to navigate a workplace where the promise of AI is overshadowed by the reality of increased pressure, reduced autonomy, and the ever-present threat of layoffs.

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“Trying to AI my way out of a problem that AI caused.”
“Half-baked” and unhelpful tools adding to workload.
“If we don’t pivot… then we risk becoming obsolete.”
“The unspoken math of what they’re doing.”
“You don’t look at the problem and go, ‘How do I use this hammer I have?’”,