More than 1,000 Amazon employees issue major warning on how AI could impact humanity
AI is set to impact jobs in every industry, and major corporations have told their employees to prepare for it. Over 1,000 Amazon employees have anonymously signed an open letter expressing “serious concerns” about AI development and its impact on the climate, democracy, and the company's employees. In the letter published on Wednesday, and addressed to CEO Andy Jassy and the "S-Team," the advocacy group "Amazon Employees for Climate Justice" outlined the key issues with Amazon's "all-costs-justified, warp-speed approach to AI development," and put forward demands for the company to adhere to its climate goals and invest in holistic development.
“We, the undersigned Amazon employees, have serious concerns about this aggressive rollout during the global rise of authoritarianism and our most important years to reverse the climate crisis,” the letter reads. The authors further express concerns about the company's technology favoring “a more militarized surveillance state with fewer protections for ordinary people."
The first concern expressed in the letter was over Amazon casting its climate goals aside to build AI. The letter claimed the company's emissions grew by 35% since 2019, which hinders its progress toward achieving the goal of net carbon neutrality by 2040. Furthermore, a Seattle Times report noted that Amazon's emissions grew by 6% last year, partly due to its rapid development of data centers.
However, in a statement to Fortune, Amazon refuted the claims that it has abandoned its climate commitments, calling them “categorically false and ignore the facts.” The company's spokesperson, Brad Glasser, told Fortune that, “Amazon is already committed to powering our operations even more sustainably and investing in carbon-free energy. This includes supporting two advanced nuclear energy agreements and investing in more than 600 renewable energy projects worldwide,” adding that the company is working to make its operations, including data centers, more energy efficient.
The second concern was about Amazon forcing its workers to use AI while "investing in a future where it’s easier to discard" them. The letter cited CEO Andy Jassy's comments on the company's plan to use AI tools and agents in the future and employ fewer humans. "Here’s what we’re actually experiencing: higher expected output and shorter timelines, mandates to build AI tools for wasteful use cases, and massive investment in AI with little investment in career advancement," the authors wrote. The letter claimed that the logistics workers are especially impacted by work speedups, surveillance, injuries, and burnout, while Amazon is trying to declare the National Labor Relations Board, which protects workers’ rights, "unconstitutional." This comes on the backdrop of Amazon announcing to cut 14,000 corporate jobs or about 4% of its workforce in the coming years, as a part of the company's AI-driven restructuring.
Representative image of an Amazon worker at a fulfillment centre in Texas (Image source: Getty Images/Photo by Robert Daemmrich)The letter also claimed that Amazon is helping to build "a more militarized surveillance state with fewer protections for ordinary people." The authors claimed Amazon has scaled back on DEI and offered monetary support to the Donald Trump administration's AI push. The letter cited several collaborations between Amazon, the U.S. government, and the military to make its case. "If these collaborations continue, we will be ceding an unbelievable amount of power into the hands of an increasingly authoritarian government and a few companies willing to abandon any principles they claim to have in the race for AI dominance," the letter added. According to Bloomberg, Amazon has announced plans to invest $50 billion to expand AI and supercomputing infrastructure for U.S. government customers on Amazon Web Services, beginning in 2026, and spend $150 billion on data centers over the next 15 years.
"All of this is daunting, but none of it is inevitable. A better future is still very much within reach, but it requires us to get real about the costs of AI and the guardrails we need," the letter suggested.
The authors called for, "No AI with dirty energy, No AI without employee voices," and "No AI for violence, surveillance, or mass deportation." It urged the company to look into measures of powering all data centers with 100% local, renewable energy sources, mitigate AI-related layoffs, commit gains from AI to be invested in ensuring more freedom, and better quality of life.
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