Amazon plans to slash roughly 14,000 corporate jobs as the e-commerce giant competes in the race to advance artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n
A company executive told employees on Tuesday that even though Amazon\u2019s business is performing well, it aims to eliminate more layers within the company so it can \u201cmove as quickly as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis generation of AI is the most transformative technology we\u2019ve seen since the Internet, and it\u2019s enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before (in existing market segments and altogether new ones),\u201d wrote Beth Galetti, Amazon\u2019s senior vice president of people experience and technology, in a memo<\/a> to employees the company posted online.<\/p>\n Amazon is headquartered in Seattle, but the company\u2019s global workforce includes workers in the Los Angeles area. Galetti\u2019s memo doesn\u2019t say where the affected employees are based.<\/p>\n The company didn\u2019t answer questions about whether California employees are part of the cuts. The California Employment Development Department said it hadn\u2019t received layoff notices related to Amazon\u2019s latest cuts as of Tuesday morning.<\/p>\n On professional social network LinkedIn, Amazon employees who posted they were laid off included recruiters, engineers and managers in various states.<\/p>\n The layoffs are the latest example of how major tech companies are reorganizing their workforce and cutting costs as they invest billions of dollars in artificial intelligence. Last week, social media company Meta<\/a> said it was cutting 600 jobs in its AI division as part of efforts to move swiftly and eliminate more layers within the company.<\/p>\n Following the popularity of OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT, a chatbot that can generate text, images and code, big tech companies such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta are also competing head-to-head with smaller startups that are swiftly releasing new AI features. <\/p>\n The rise of what\u2019s known as generative AI has the potential to disrupt various industries, and that includes how people shop and buy items online. <\/p>\n Tech companies are spending big on compensation packages to recruit top AI researchers, building new data centers and doubling down on AI-powered agents and robots. Still, the rise of AI has fueled anxiety among workers concerned their jobs could be automated.<\/p>\n In June, Amazon\u2019s Chief Executive Andy Jassy<\/a> said he expects the e-commerce giant will shrink its workforce as employees \u201cget efficiency gains from using AI extensively.\u201d Amazon\u2019s job cut announcement also followed an earlier report<\/a> by Reuters on Monday that the e-commerce giant is targeting as many as 30,000 job cuts, raising questions about whether more layoffs are coming.<\/p>\n