Amazon Workers Issue Warning About Company’s ‘All-Costs-Justified’ Approach to AI Development | EUROtoday

Over 1,000 Amazon staff have anonymously signed an open letter warning that the corporate’s allegedly “all-costs-justified, warp-speed approach to AI development” may trigger “staggering damage to democracy, to our jobs, and to the earth,” an inside advocacy group introduced on Wednesday.

Four members of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice inform WIRED that they started asking employees to signal the letter final month. After reaching their preliminary objective, the group revealed on Wednesday the job titles of the Amazon staff who signed and disclosed that greater than 2,400 supporters from different organizations, together with Google and Apple, have additionally joined in.

Backers inside Amazon embody high-ranking engineers, senior product leaders, advertising managers, and warehouse workers spanning many divisions of the corporate. A senior engineering supervisor with over 20 years at Amazon says they signed as a result of they imagine a manufactured “race” to construct the very best AI has empowered executives to trample employees and the setting.

“The current generation of AI has become almost like a drug that companies like Amazon obsess over, use as a cover to lay people off, and use the savings to pay for data centers for AI products no one is paying for,” says the worker, who like others on this story, requested to stay nameless as a result of they feared retaliation from their bosses.

Amazon, together with different large tech firms, is within the midst of investing billions of {dollars} to assemble new knowledge facilities to coach and run generative AI techniques. This consists of instruments serving to employees write code and consumer-facing companies reminiscent of Amazon’s buying chatbot, Rufus. It’s simple to see why Amazon is pursuing AI. Last month, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy introduced that Rufus was on observe to extend Amazon’s gross sales by $10 billion yearly. It “is continuing to get better and better,” he mentioned.

AI techniques demand important energy, which has compelled utility firms to show to coal vegetation and different carbon-emitting sources of vitality to help the info heart growth. The open letter calls for that Amazon abandon carbon gasoline sources at its knowledge facilities, bar its AI applied sciences from getting used to hold out surveillance and mass deportation, and cease forcing staff to make use of AI of their work. “We, the undersigned Amazon employees, have serious concerns about this aggressive rollout during the global rise of authoritarianism and our most important years to reverse the climate crisis,” the letter states.