From deeper in the article:
"Fabian Stephany, assistant professor of AI and work at the Oxford Internet Institute, said AI might not be the bad guy it is painted as, according to CNBC. [snort!]
"'I’m really skeptical whether the layoffs that we see currently are really due to true efficiency gains. It’s rather really a projection into AI in the sense of ‘We can use AI to make good excuses,’ Stephany said."
I've been a serious cynic of this "AI" crap. All humans need are food and housing. Pretty much everything else is bullshit. In my view, the homesteading movement growing among the MAGA folks is where the action is, and "AI" is totally irrelevant.
Also, I notice that what people think only AI can do has been done with relational databases for years.
The Deep State world is falling apart, and Amazon was part of it. Sales are not down yet, but I understand that they sell mostly merchandise made in... CHINA. Do we even need all this stuff? For what we actually need, can it be made in the U.S. and sold directly from the companies to customers? The Chinese tariff thing comes and goes, but it looks to me that big tariffs would shut down Amazon. Made-in-America would do the same thing.
Also, these big organizations always have tons of dead weight when it comes to office employees that could be cleaned up. No "AI" involved.
Also, I point out that the Amazon Web Services part of the business just had a major blackout because they are badly managing servers all in one location.
Is Bezos seeing the future right now? I also recall that he has been kissing Trump's ass.
Kinda random thoughts. What do you think?
We have a huge Amazon building in my town, plus the delivery companies for Amazon, and I see the people going to work at Amazon at the bus stop and the delivery truck drivers.. you know what I’m going to say next lol
none of them are white or Americans.. many look like they’re fresh off the boat. So I think laying off these people means they can’t find enough Americans to work because of gentrification and Americans can’t afford the rents or buy house (property tax is sky high) and they’re building these apartments for illegals and section8 and I see those hijab women walking around.. my town did it to get the fundings if below poverty level or some shit.. they’re really playing the system here.
That's an angle that I didn't think of. With the Trump administration quickly cleaning up the illegal situation, including no more handouts, everything is changing rapidly.
So it sounds like BEZOS was benefiting from handouts coming from taxpayers. Jeez!
Yep 💯 We were wondering how Amazon gets away with hiring so many non citizens who may or may not be legal here and we figured out they must go through a 3rd party broker for hiring -include truck drivers and the trucks- to avoid legalities. For example, most of the Amazon packages that come my way daily are delivered by non-English speaking people, which made me question how they were able to be here without being able to speak English. They musta been here in the country only recently and how did they get here and got their work permit?
Most all these companies use third party brokers so, when the sh*t hits the fan, they can say their hands are clean. How convenient. They must be held accountable for all their employees regardless if they use third parties for purposes of hiring. Start removing some of those employee tax exemptions for several years and see how fast they change.
Many larger corporations do. They have been taking advantage of the system for years.
In the Amazon break rooms they have giant posters for every single demographic, one for each, stating how much Amazon cares for all these diverse groups. No posters for white people of course. White people, men, and straight people are the only groups that Amazon doesnt seem to like.
This was my thought exactly. How many illegals were working at Amazon? I believe it could be a combination of things. People are living lean right now. Maybe sales are down a bit. Also, I think some of these corporations are slowly firing the illegals so they won't be found out and spotlighted.
So that day we were talking about Amazon hiring people through a 3rd party, ICE came and raided 2 towns next to mine. Coincidink?
From a hat I've noticed with my own job searches, these employers are holding out for 1) someone who checks off every requirement or preference, 2) they're holding out for younger people, and 3) they're just leaving job postings up for appearance's sake.
I've been tu Ned down for more jobs in just th last 3 months than I ever had before. Even when I know I'm more than fully qualified. The only things I can come up with is 1) I'm approaching 50 now and 2) these employers aren't really hiring, they're just making it seem like they are.
Coincidentally, someone in an HR Dept at a previous company I worked at,told me that if they leave the job placements up but don't hire and only take in applications, they get federal subsidies because it looks like they can't find adequate candidates. I don't know if it's true or not, but it helps explain the job numbers reports and how they don't really reflect the reality of the workforces.
All true.
They should have lots of openings at the warehouses when ICE is through with them.
ICE should just use Amazon's warehouses as they are popping up everywhere...
Oh, that would be sweet!
I've known people that worked for Amazon. They all said it sucked and quit. Heard many of the same things about UPS. They treat their employees like crap and often have very unsafe conditions. Same holds true for Walmart.
They have been using migrant workers for so long it has lowered the curve for what is acceptable and they have been able to get away with it. If there are less foreigners in the employment pool, that forces them to raise their standards if they want to stay in business.
Wait, is it AI as in "Artificial Intelligence" or AI as in "Anonymous Indians" cuz the latter has been replacing tech workers for decades and is old news
I like it. Let's spread the word.
I knew Microsoft employees and people that worked for Disney IT. They were all replaced by foreigners. To add insult to injury, they also had to train these foreigners to take their jobs. All while at the same time those same employers cried to the government that they needed employees in order to justify the visas. Disgusting.
Sometimes I wonder if the autonomous cars I see driving around are actually being remotely controlled by Anonymous Indians.
Ding! Ding! Ding! I like that....AI
"All humans need are food and housing"
I'd also appreciate some clothing for covering up the liberals, if that wouldn't be too much trouble.
Good point. The Portland protest was evidence of that. Let's empty out the thrift stores.
Good random thoughts. I agree that affordable Food and Housing are key, while all other Trinkets are optional..
Breaking news: a Federal Judge has ruled Amazon cannot lay anyone off...ever also the same judge said Trump is not allowed to lay off anyone....ever.
/s
Breaking news: The vast majority of genuine U.S. citizens think most federal judges need to be laid off. Then arrested.
Why not arrest them first?
Mmmm...good point.
"AI" is a large language model. It is giving computers the ability to figure out context from human speech. It is only a new kind of menu system.
Before: Go to file-> save as. Now: 'Save file as "crazy ass meme dot Jay peg".'
The other functions, like image processing algorithms, sensor data reactions, and all of that already existed. They already functioned. Now they are just hooked to an LLM. There is no actual thought behind it, just case selections to match what was said/found in sensor data/etc.
The "dangerous AI" stories are FUD because those "AI" installation were specifically trained (a lazy word for programmed) to avoid being turned off and to also have the ability to access all email functions or whatever in a company to attempt to prevent their deactivation.
This is terribly reductive.
Maybe AI means an LLM to most people - a lot of people simply think of the chat products out there - but nobody in the industry thinks of it that way. An LLM can be a part over an overall AI system (a body, let's say the language center). An LLM (if needed) is not smart, it's a one shot dummy box of statistics, and the best way to make it smarter is to increase its context - bigger and bigger one shots.
Agentic AI, models that can perform tasks independently, are already replacing some jobs, or at least some levels of jobs. This has only made it's way down to corporate America in the last year or so - MCP isn't even fully standardized or adopted, but as more MCP servers built and connections are made, then the tasks agents can perform broaden. This is the current race. Let LLMs touch more systems. If your job is/was at a desk, you can, and will, be replaced.
Source am FAANG/GAMMAA/Whatever senior engineer.
Then you understand what I am saying. It's not an "AI" its a collection of algorithms. Calling it "Agentic AI" doesn't change that its not inferential thought or reasoning, it's literally a probabilistic flow chart instruction list.
If i shoot at the ground beneath your feet and tell you to dance and you have never seen dancing before, you'll start moving your feet like a spastic muscle relaxant ninja based on nothing more than a description of dancing you read when you were six.
An Agentic AI (in a humanoid robot body for some reason) in the same situation would need a specific set of instructions both telling it how to respond with survival instincts to follow instructions under threat and one telling it how to dance because otherwise it would just stand there. Just knowing what dancing might entail wouldn't be acted upon. (Granted, knowing humans and what we like to program, it would probably detect a threat and punch the gun guy in the throat, but that's a different discussion).
You've made a distinction without a difference. I think LLMs prove that 'a specific set of instructions' is not necessary at a fundamental level - or at the very least, it's statistically irrelevant. Given enough data to train on (and we're just getting started), context can be inferred, and often is, by LLMs.
I mean, you just just described an LLM. If someone starts shooting at my feet, I'm not going to try and start calculating ballistic trajectories, I'm going to flail. An LLM would, and could now currently, do the same.
An llm doesn't infer meaning. It is a giant nested for evaluation. As an example AI readers can't even get the context of live vs live correct. If they were "infering" they would be able understand the context and infer the correct form of the word.
And an llm in a robot body wouldn't flail, it would have had no language to evaluate from a bullet, plus it wouldnt dance from the instruction unless it was programmed to. The best an llm could do is respond with language to the instruction to dance.
Without the additional directions, an llm is a chat bot. A programmer has to write the code to do whatever its going to do when it encounters words and instructions.
You're in the weeds, and I suggest you read up even the very consumer level usages Model Context Protocols. To simplify, I can wire up a servo to a light switch, expose that via a 3 line MCP, and tell an LLM it has access to said switch. I ask it to turn on the light, it will. Extrapolate. This is here now. We use it on a much larger scale, every day.
edit: and forget programming. We train models. They can be LLMs, SMLs, CV models, etc. They can and do heuristically derive context. That's how the whole thing works.
A lot of companies are way overbloated having hired too many in their corporate offices during COVID and immediately afterward. Not to mention made several acquisitions and mergers they probably shouldn’t have. In Amazons case. The layoffs are primarily affecting their corporate offices and management. It’s also coming on the heels of poor performance of several projects and declining revenue in several subsidiaries and Divisions.
Easier and less embarrassing for senior leadership to blame AI. Rather than acknowledge their own fuckups.
Good point.
Hopefully it is the destruction of the Deep State.
I'm a little verklempt. Talk amongst yourselves.
(Just my funny bone reacting to the "Discuss" at the end of OP's post)
I am very skeptical that these layoffs have anything to do with a takedown of the deep state or the Cabal.
There's very little money being made right now from AI. Large companies are investing BILLIONS into their AI algorithms and AI training. At some point, those companies need to make the pivot to profitability to make all those billions of dollars back.
The only way you make back that kind of investment in this technology is large scale replacement of human workers.
Most people simply do not understand what's coming in the next 5 years. Around 1 year ago, mainstream AI modules were released/pushed onto desktops and browsers. Think of where Google Copilot and Microsoft Copilot were at one year ago. Pretty awful/useless.
Just one year later of refinement and training on real user data, and both have become quite useful, though far from perfect.
While the old cliché of AI evolving at an "exponential rate" is a bit of an exaggeration, it's not much of one. The algorithms are getting better and as more people use these tools, the AI's get exposed to greater quantities of real training data.
My biggest concern is that I see very few signs of the federal government understanding the scenario in front of us, let alone taking meaningful action. We're talking about the potential for nearly every entry level job in the country to be replaced by either software or AI-equipped robots.
Amazon is simply getting ahead of the curve.
The Amazon announcement is being used as a warning to people that their jobs are not going to exist in five years. The announcement is heartless—typical Deep state bullshit. It’s just a “hey, we’re replacing you,” announcement. “And there’s more coming!”
I dont understand the layoffs either. I remember about 5 years ago Bezos stating that Amazon probably wont be around in another 5 years. To me it seems impossible since they seem to be the 800# Gorilla right now and using there service is so convienant. But you never really know whats going on behind the scenes. Me and my wife have remarked lately that most of the Amazon drivers by us can barely speak English. Seems a prime hot spot for Mr. Tom Homan!
Mark my words, corporations are conspiring to eliminate jobs before the 2026 midterms in order to help the democrat-run establishment and fakenews generate headlines and talking points, which will blame Trump for the highest unemployment rate in history. Everyone is getting fired or laid off in 2026.
I fervently hope the layoffs are H1 B holders. I would even suggest the big blackout of AWS a couple weeks ago was due to their lack of knowledge.
I'm virtually positive of that. It's unbelievable who is hired for "IT teams."
How do all of these layoffs time up with regards to the public notice period requirement for large companies and the increased H1B cost pushed out a while ago?
Ironically Amazon announced that they’re blocking access to ChatGPT so that it can no longer recommend products available for purchase on Amazon.com
So.... UPS just announced laying off 45k...
Is that because Amazon is taking market share?
Are they both reducing as "writing on the wall" aka red October & black Friday?
Is this a canary in the financial coalmine?
Is it due to "sudden automation" (I doubt it) prompting laying off redundant package sorters vs automated belts, scanners and pneumatic package kickers? Siemens just unveiled a robotic android that mimics the Samsonite test monkeys - can body slam packages marked "fragilé in microseconds... /S
My inner skeptic is open to the total possibility that neither Amazon nor UPS is laying off ANYBODY - seriously - who's gonna check? They're just announcing it to phuck with the stock price and probably some other shitty/greedy reason... like steering public perception/confidence or lack there of in the market as a clandestine way to fk w/POTUS and us... Would NOT surprise me...
u/#catdance
I am looking forward to owning nothing, including a job. Thanks AI.
Its AI, Its going to take the office type jobs over and then the robots will come in and do the manual stuff.
I'm right there with you brother, I think your just about dead on target. This swamp will deflate quickly when it does. Praise the Lord, Amen!
I’ve been thinking about applying to the local Amazon warehouse for extra income/hours. This doesn’t make me feel good about bothering to apply.
IMHO this is good news. Not great news but good. Many jobs will be replaced by technology, ai, robots, etc anyways. Amazon employees give zero fucks. Many cases and examples exist. It’s time to send the first wave of morons back for reprogramming.
Maybe it's just cover for illegals being deported and Amazon losing their cheap / subsidized labor.
How did everyone think shipping was going to become inexpensive? MACHINES AND AI!!! Finally!
Im not sure how anyone can survive on what amazon pays thier drivers. None of them by me speak english, many use their own cars for deliveries.