More than 1,000 Amazon employees anonymously signed an open letter warning that the company’s “purportedly cost-effective, full-speed approach to AI development” could cause “tremendous damage to democracy, our jobs and the earth,” an internal advocacy group said Wednesday.
Four members of Amazon Workers for Climate Justice told WIRED they began asking workers to sign the letter last month. After reaching its initial goal, the group on Wednesday released the job titles of the Amazon employees who signed and revealed that more than 2,400 supporters from other organizations, including Google and Apple, had also joined.
Backers within Amazon include senior engineers, senior product managers, marketing managers and warehouse staff spanning many of the company’s divisions. A senior technical manager with more than 20 years of experience at Amazon says he signed because he believes a manufactured “race” to build the best AI has allowed executives to trample workers and the environment.
“The current generation of AI has become almost like a drug that companies like Amazon are obsessed with, using as a cover to fire people, and using the savings to fund data centers for AI products that no one pays for,” says the employee, who, like others in this story, asked to remain anonymous because he feared retaliation from his bosses.
Amazon, along with other major tech companies, is investing billions of dollars to build new data centers to train and run generative AI systems. This includes tools that help workers write code and consumer-facing services such as Amazon’s commerce chatbot, Rufus. It’s easy to see why Amazon is interested in AI. Last month, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced that Rufus was on track to increase Amazon’s sales by $10 billion annually. It “continues to improve,” he said.
AI systems require significant energy, which has forced utility companies to turn to coal-fired plants and other carbon-emitting energy sources to support the data center boom. The open letter demands that Amazon abandon carbon fuel sources in its data centers, prohibit its AI technologies from being used to carry out surveillance and mass eviction operations, and stop requiring its employees to use AI in their jobs. “We, the undersigned Amazon employees, are seriously concerned about this aggressive deployment during the global rise of authoritarianism and our most important years to reverse the climate crisis,” the letter said.
