According to the internal strategy documents viewed by The New York Times, the Robotics and Automation team of Amazon have mapped up a long-term plan wherein :
1. Amazon is expecting to double its product volume by 2033, but it may avoid hiring roughly 600,000 U.S. workers.
2. The goal for the same is to automate up to 75% of its operations, i.e., warehouse, logistics and material-handling in the upcoming years.
3. The first wave of Amazon robots could replace 160,000 jobs by 2027.
Kelly Nantel, a spokeswoman for Amazon stated, “the leaked documents only highlight the opinions of a single team in the company, and not the company at large.”
Another spokesperson said, “No company has created more jobs in America over the past decade than Amazon and the company is actively hiring at an operational facility with plans to fill 250,000 positions for the holiday season.” But, the company remains silent about the long-term employment prospectives.
Amazon is aware of the society’s explosive nature of these plans, therefore chooses its words carefully. Internal communication strategies recommended to avoid words such as “artificial intelligence” or “automation”. Instead, words such as “advanced technology” or “cobots” should be used to conceal job cuts.
This issue is not just about efficiency or technical innovation, but it’s social and moral. Its ripple effects on the market could be massive. If Amazon will stand on what the sources have claimed, we will have to see how society decides to welcome its robots, and whether we can actually sustain a system where humans don’t work, but are still expected to buy.
In nutshell, what remains is a field of tension between short-term growth and long-term displacement of human labour, and between technological progress and social regression.
