Amazon workers push back as over 1,000 sign letter warning against ‘warp-speed’ AI rollout | Technology News

The letter has been signed by employees across job roles ranging from engineers to product managers to warehouse associates. The initiative has also garnered support from over 2,400 employees working with tech giants like Microsoft, Meta, Apple, and Google. 

“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. We believe that the all-costs-justified, warp-speed approach to AI development will do staggering damage to democracy, to our jobs, and to the earth,” read the opening of the letter. 

Our responsibility to intervene

In the letter, the Amazon staff claimed that they are the workers who develop, train, and use AI, which makes it their responsibility to intervene. The letter goes on to list the major concerns shared by the employees. It cites three major concerns such as the company putting aside its climate goals to build AI, forcing employees to use AI while investing in a future where it can easily discard them, and Amazon helping build a more militarised surveillance state with fewer protections for common people.  

Raising an alarm about the impending climate change disaster, the undersigned letter claims that there are just a few years left to stop the disastrous levels of warming. Though the e-commerce giant has committed to net-zero carbon emissions by 2040, its carbon emissions have grown about 35 per cent since 2019. 

“The AI race is widening this gap. The company plans to spend $150 billion building new data centres for AI. Many of these will be in drought-stressed regions, where they will consume scarce water, or in locations where their energy demands will force utility companies to keep coal plants online or build new gas plants. Amazon even killed legislation that would have required its data centres to use clean energy. Meanwhile, AWS is helping oil companies drill for more oil and gas,” read the letter. 

It also mentions CEO Andy Jassy, who promised that Amazon will soon be full of AI tools and agents and that the company expects to employ fewer humans. While Jassy claimed that their remaining job will be more ‘exciting and fun’, the employees state that they are experiencing higher expected output and shorter timelines, mandates to build AI tools for futile use cases, and massive investment in AI with too little investment in career advancement. 

“Our logistics coworkers have been especially impacted by work speedups, surveillance, injuries and burnout. All this, while Amazon is attempting to declare the National Labor Relations Board, which protects workers’ rights, unconstitutional,” read the letter. 

Role in mass surveillance and deportations

The letter accused Amazon, alongside Meta, Microsoft, and Google, of lobbying to ban state regulation on AI for the next 10 years, with President Donald Trump financially disincentivising state regulatory action in his AI action plan. The letter also slams Amazon for its collaboration with an autonomous weapons software company. It claims that Amazon is expanding surveillance in other ways, such as using AI to monitor warehouse staff as well as its customers.  The employees also called out the company for its role in mass deportations from the US. 

While acknowledging that it is a daunting scenario for them, employees have urged the company to get real about the costs of IA and the required guardrails. The employees demand Amazon leadership to make three commitments – no AI with dirty energy, no AI without employee voices, and most importantly, no AI for violence, surveillance, and mass deportation.