Amazon Cuts 16,000 Jobs as AI Plans Reshape Roles (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Amazon said today that it's laying off 16,000 of its workers. Add that to the 14,000 job cuts it announced in October, and that's 30,000 job cuts announced within a matter of weeks. So what is going on? It's not clear exactly where in the business these latest job cuts will be and in what regions. And they only make up a small fraction of the total. They're about 1.5 million people employed by Amazon. But of course, it's understandable that these latest announcements will have fuelled fears about the extent to which, if at all, artificial intelligence may have played a part. In a blog post on Wednesday, Amazon said that these new cuts were a way to reduce bureaucracy. CEO of Amazon Andy Jassy said pretty bluntly last year that as the company rolls out more AI agents, there will be need for fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today and more people doing other types of jobs. Now, Amazon is like many other tech companies in that it's pouring tens of billions of dollars into building up AI infrastructure as a way to corner the AI market. Beth Galletti, Amazon's senior vice president of people, said on Wednesday that job cuts would not become the new rhythm of the company. But that may not be enough reassurance for workers at Amazon.