According to internal documents obtained by The New York Times, Amazon management believes the company is ready for its next big transformation: replacing more than 600,000 jobs in the United States with robots.
According to internal documents obtained by The New York Times, Amazon management believes the company is ready for its next big transformation: replacing more than 600,000 jobs in the United States with robots.
Amazon's robotics team is working to automate 75% of all the company's operations and expects to cut 160,000 jobs in the U.S. that would be needed by 2027, The New York Times reported .
This will save about 30 cents on every item Amazon processes in warehouses and ships to customers, with the automation efforts expected to save the company $12.6 billion between 2025 and 2027.
The company hopes that robotic automation will allow it to continue to avoid adding to its U.S. workforce in the coming years, even as sales are expected to double by 2033. That would mean Amazon wouldn't have to hire more than 600,000 workers.
Amazon is so convinced that this automated future is just around the corner that it has already begun developing plans to mitigate the negative impacts on communities that could lose jobs. The documents show that the company has considered creating an image as a “good corporate citizen” through increased participation in community events, such as parades and the Toys for Kids campaign.
The documents suggest avoiding the use of terms such as “automation” and “AI” when referring to robotics. Instead, they suggest using the terms “advanced technologies” or replacing the word “robot” with “cobot,” which implies collaboration with humans.
In a comment to The New York Times, Amazon said the leaked documents were incomplete and did not reflect the company's overall hiring strategy, and that management was not instructed to avoid using certain terms when discussing robotics.
