Bloomberg/Getty Images
The adoption of artificial intelligence systems throughout the business sector will lead to "fewer people doing some of the jobs" that become automated, Amazon president and CEO Andy Jassy said in an interview with CNBC's Jim Cramer this week.
Jassy's understated comments about the future impacts of automation upon the job market were also optimistic: While he concedes that some people will be replaced by AI, the technology will simultaneously "make all of our jobs more interesting " and lead to new roles.
"We're going to hire more people in AI, more people in robotics, and there will be other jobs…that we'll hire [for] over time, too," he told Cramer.
Also: You've heard about AI killing jobs, but here are 15 news ones AI could create
Such reassurances have become the norm among leaders of the major tech firms, as fears of AI-fueled job displacement continue to percolate.
In a blog post published last month, for example, OpenAI's Sam Altman wrote that while AI will cause "whole classes of jobs" to disappear, this will ultimately be worthwhile thanks to the massive and widespread wealth the technology will supposedly generate. And in a recent episode of the podcast Hard Fork, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said the company has "no plan" to hire fewer engineers next year than it has this year.
The human cost
Like every other major tech company, Amazon has been investing heavily in AI. In February, the company unveiled Alexa+, its new AI-powered assistant. Last month, it announced the general launch of its Video Generator platform, which allows advertisers to create simple video ads from still images of products. And just last week, the company announced the launch of DeepFleet, a new foundation model designed to coordinate and streamline the behavior of its huge fleet of fulfillment center robots.
The company's escalating embrace of AI comes with a human cost. Foreshadowing the statements he'd later make to CNBC, Jassy told Amazon employees in a memo last month that AI will make some of the company's jobs redundant, while simultaneously creating more demand for human labor in certain job categories.
... continue reading