"The one thing N. Lee Plumb knows for sure about being laid off from Amazon last week is that it wasn't a failure to get on board with the company's artificial intelligence plans. Plumb, his team's head of AI enablement, says he was so prolific in his use of Amazon's new AI coding tool that the company flagged him as one of its top users."
"Many assumed Amazon's 16,000 corporate layoffs announced last week reflected CEO Andy Jassy's push to reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company. But like other companies that have tied workforce changes to AI including Expedia, Pinterest and Dow last week it can be hard for economists, or individual employees like Plumb, to know if AI is the real reason behind the layoffs or if it's the message a company wants to tell Wall Street."
"AI has to drive a return on investment, said Plumb, who worked at Amazon for eight years. When you reduce head count, you've demonstrated efficiency, you attract more capital, the share price goes up. So you could potentially have just been bloated in the first place, reduce head count, attribute it to AI, and now you've got a value story, he said."
N. Lee Plumb was laid off from Amazon despite being a prolific user of the company's new AI coding tool and serving as his team's head of AI enablement. Amazon announced 16,000 corporate layoffs amid claims of seeking efficiency gains through AI, but causal links between AI adoption and job cuts remain unclear. Companies sometimes frame head-count reductions as AI-driven efficiency to attract capital and lift share prices. Economists note that AI productivity gains often require adjustments and tend to benefit individual employees more than organizations. Plumb, an eight-year Amazon employee running for Congress on a platform opposing reliance on work visas, expresses skepticism about AI being the sole cause of layoffs.
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