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Jonathan Price – CRE & Flex Expert
Andy Jassy, who sent shockwaves through the jobs market as one of the first major chief executives to say that “AI will mean fewer jobs,” sounded a different tone on the earnings call accompanying Amazon’s earnings on July 31.
He reiterated his view that artificial intelligence (AI) will be a transformative force, saying it “is going to change very substantially the way we work” and emphasizing sweeping impacts already under way. It’s changing the way Amazon does coding, finance, all sorts of things, he said: “really the way we do business process automation, the way we do customer service.”
But then he pivoted.
Jassy said AI “will make all our teammates’ jobs more enjoyable,” freeing them up from having to do the “rote” functions that could not previously be automated. Companies have a choice in the AI revolution, he added: they can embrace the change that’s happening and help shape the new era, “or you can wish it away and have it shape you.”
He said he has worked to make clear, internally and externally, that Amazon will embrace this moment.
‘Much more advanced’
While AI’s promise and pitfalls have dominated tech headlines for the past two years, Jassy’s comments detailed concrete examples of how Amazon is rapidly embedding advanced AI into both its internal workflows and customer-facing services. He highlighted the company’s investments in generative AI agents that can assist with—or even independently perform—complex coding tasks.
“Coding agents, having AI do a lot of the coding for us … allows our teammates to start from a much more advanced starting spot,” Jassy explained.
This philosophy of combining human creativity with AI-powered efficiency is reshaping other vital departments as well. In research and finance, Jassy described AI tools that can quickly synthesize vast quantities of information or flag anomalies in financial data, freeing up skilled employees for strategic work.
Jassy also spotlighted AI’s growing influence in Amazon’s expansive call center and customer service operations. He pointed to services like AWS Connect—the company’s cloud-based call center solution—which now has deep AI integrations for more natural customer interactions and automated issue resolution.
Jassy’s transformative outlook
Jassy has been emphasizing the increasing impact of AI for several months now, for instance suggesting that employees attend AI trainings while promising investors that AI will make them “very happy” down the road.
Amazon had delivered strong earnings earlier on July 31, yet investors sent the stock down roughly 7% in post-market trading with investors concerned about trade headwinds and Amazon’s long-term spending plans. Jassy told analysts on the call that, with regard to the impact of tariffs through the first half of the year, “we haven’t yet seen diminishing demand, nor prices meaningfully appreciating.”
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Written by Nick Lichtenberg for Fortune as “Andy Jassy says Amazon has chosen to ’embrace’ AI, promising it ‘will make all our teammates’ jobs more enjoyable’” and republished with permission.
