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To move up the corporate ladder at Amazon’s smart-home businesses, employees will now have to show AI use and those in management positions will have to prove they are accomplishing “more with less” using the technology..
The new policy, which starts in the third quarter of this year, was announced by Ring founder Jamie Siminoff, who oversees Amazon’s Ring and Blink security cameras, Key in-home delivery service, and Sidewalk wireless network, in an email Wednesday detailing that all promotion applications at the tech giant’s RBKS organization must now detail how employees are using AI to perform their duties.
A Ring spokesperson confirmed the promotion initiative in a statement to Fortune. Siminoff’s rule, however, only applies to RBKS employees, not Amazon at large.
The change comes two months after Siminoff returned to Amazon, replacing former RBKS division leader Liz Hamren. His return to the company came amid a broader push by CEO Andy Jassy to re-embrace Amazon’s startup roots.
Siminoff’s AI policy, according to a copy of the email seen by Business Insider, is meant to reward “innovative thinking” and promote a culture of speed and efficiency, both key tenets of Jassy’s current vision for Amazon.
In his email, Siminoff outlined that employees seeking a promotion would now have to describe how they have used generative AI or other AI tools to improve operational efficiency or customer experience. Employees will also be asked to provide examples of AI projects they’ve worked on and these projects’ outcomes.
For managers, Siminoff wrote that they would need to demonstrate how they’ve used AI to accomplish “more with less,” while reducing or not expanding headcount.
The policy appears in line with comments made by Jassy last month that AI would reduce the tech company’s workforce due to improved efficiency. Other Big Tech companies are making similar changes. Shopify announced in April that before managers could hire anyone new, they would have to prove AI couldn’t do a job better. And Microsoft has begun asking some managers to evaluate employees based on their use of internal AI tools.
Siminoff’s latest change is one of several at Amazon’s RBKS pushing for deeper integration of AI and better efficiency. Since June, he’s encouraged employees to use AI at least once a day to improve productivity.
“We are reimagining Ring from the ground up with AI first,” Siminoff wrote in a recent email to staff obtained by Business Insider. “It feels like the early days again — same energy and the same potential to revolutionize how we do our neighborhood safety.”
Written by Lily Mae Lazarus for Fortune as “If Amazon Ring staff want a promotion, they must now prove they’ve used AI” and republished with permission.
