Amazon made $35b profit last year.
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Amazon made $35b profit last year. They're celebrating by laying off 14,000 workers (a number they say will rise to 30k). This is the kind of thing that Wall Street *loves*, and this layoff comes after a string of pronouncements from Amazon CEO about how AI is going to let them fire *tons* of workers.
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Amazon made $35b profit last year. They're celebrating by laying off 14,000 workers (a number they say will rise to 30k). This is the kind of thing that Wall Street *loves*, and this layoff comes after a string of pronouncements from Amazon CEO about how AI is going to let them fire *tons* of workers.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
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That's the AI story, after all. It's not about making workers more productive or creative. The only way to recoup the $700 billion in capital expenditure to date (to say nothing of AI companies' rather fanciful coming capex commitments) is by displacing workers - a *lot* of workers.
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That's the AI story, after all. It's not about making workers more productive or creative. The only way to recoup the $700 billion in capital expenditure to date (to say nothing of AI companies' rather fanciful coming capex commitments) is by displacing workers - a *lot* of workers.
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Bain & Co say the sector needs to be grossing $2 trillion by 2030 in order to break even, which is more than the combined grosses of Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple Nvidia and Meta:
Every investor who has put a nickel into that $700b capex is counting on bosses firing a *lot* of workers and replacing them with AI.
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Bain & Co say the sector needs to be grossing $2 trillion by 2030 in order to break even, which is more than the combined grosses of Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple Nvidia and Meta:
Every investor who has put a nickel into that $700b capex is counting on bosses firing a *lot* of workers and replacing them with AI.
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Amazon is *also* counting on people buying a *lot* of AI from it after firing those workers. The company has sunk $120b into AI *this year alone*.
There's just one problem: AI can't do our jobs. Oh, sure, an AI salesman can convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI that can't do your job, but that's the world's easiest sales-call. Your boss is relentlessly horny for firing you:
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Amazon is *also* counting on people buying a *lot* of AI from it after firing those workers. The company has sunk $120b into AI *this year alone*.
There's just one problem: AI can't do our jobs. Oh, sure, an AI salesman can convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI that can't do your job, but that's the world's easiest sales-call. Your boss is relentlessly horny for firing you:
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But there's a *lot* of AI buyers' remorse. 95% of AI deployments have either produced no return on capital, or have been money-losing:
We analyzed 16,625 papers to figure out where AI is headed next
Almost everything you hear about artificial intelligence today is thanks to deep learning. This category of algorithms works by using statistics to find patterns in data, and it has proved immensely powerful in mimicking human skills such as our ability to see and hear. To a very narrow extent, it can even emulate our ability…
MIT Technology Review (www.technologyreview.com)
AI has "no significant impact on workers’ earnings, recorded hours, or wages":
Large Language Models, Small Labor Market Effects
We examine the early labor market impacts of AI chatbots by linking large-scale,representative adoption surveys to administrative labor re(papers.ssrn.com)
What's Amazon to do? How do they convince you to buy enough AI to justify that $180b in capital expenditure?
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Amazon is *also* counting on people buying a *lot* of AI from it after firing those workers. The company has sunk $120b into AI *this year alone*.
There's just one problem: AI can't do our jobs. Oh, sure, an AI salesman can convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI that can't do your job, but that's the world's easiest sales-call. Your boss is relentlessly horny for firing you:
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