Over 1,000 Amazon employees have anonymously signed an open letter warning that the company’s allegedly “all-costs-justified, warp-speed approach to AI development” could cause “staggering damage to democracy, to our jobs, and to the earth,” an internal advocacy group announced on Wednesday.
Four members of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice tell WIRED that they began asking workers to sign the letter last month. After reaching their initial goal, the group published on Wednesday the job titles of the Amazon employees who signed and disclosed that more than 2,400 supporters from other organizations, including Google and Apple, have also joined in.
Backers inside Amazon include high-ranking engineers, senior product leaders, marketing managers, and warehouse staff spanning many divisions of the company. A senior engineering manager with over 20 years at Amazon says they signed because they believe a manufactured “race” to build the best AI has empowered executives to trample workers and the environment.
“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 employee, who like others in this story, asked to remain anonymous because they feared retaliation from their bosses.
Amazon, along with other big tech companies, is in the midst of investing billions of dollars to construct new data centers to train and run generative AI systems. This includes tools helping workers write code and consumer-facing services such as Amazon’s shopping chatbot, Rufus. It’s easy to see why Amazon is pursuing AI. Last month, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced that Rufus was on track to increase Amazon’s sales by $10 billion annually. It “is continuing to get better and better,” he said.
AI systems demand significant power, which has forced utility companies to turn to coal plants and other carbon-emitting sources of energy to support the data center boom. The open letter demands that Amazon abandon carbon fuel sources at its data centers, bar its AI technologies from being used to carry out surveillance and mass deportation, and stop forcing employees to use AI in 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.
