Amazon CEO Andy Jassey recently dropped a big hint on how some enterprises are thinking of agentic AI, how it will affect their productivity and the number of human employees it will take to achieve the right mix.
Businesses have been very careful to avoid the perception that AI will replace humans as they automate more business processes—usually falling back on some version of “AI will free human workers to concentrate on higher value work.” But a persistent worry is that humans will be expendable as cheaper technology solutions become available. Jassey is one of the first to state plainly that his company will likely be able to rely on fewer humans.
“As we roll out more Generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done,” he says. “We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs. It’s hard to know exactly where this nets out over time, but in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.”
Jassey said he has strong convictions that AI agents will change the way people work and live and that they will change the scope and speed at which Amazon innovates.