Over 1000 Amazon workers have anonymously signed an open letter warning that the company’s supposedly “cost-effective and rapid approach to developing artificial intelligence” could cause “tremendous damage to democracy, our jobs and our earth,” an internal advocacy group announced Wednesday.
Four members of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice told WIRED that they have started asking workers to sign letter last month. After reaching its initial goal, the group on Wednesday posted the job titles of Amazon employees who had signed on and revealed that more than 2,400 supporters from other organizations, including Google and Apple, had also joined.
Amazon supporters include senior engineers, senior product leaders, marketing managers and warehouse workers from many departments within the company. A senior engineering manager with more than 20 years of experience at Amazon says they signed the deal because they believe the artificial “race” to build the best AI has allowed executives to trample on workers and the environment.
“The current generation of AI has become almost like a drug that companies like Amazon are obsessed with, use it as a cover to fire workers, and use the savings to pay for data centers with AI products that no one pays for,” says the employee, who, like others in this story, asked to remain anonymous because he feared retaliation from his bosses.
Amazon, along with other major technology companies, is in the process of investing billions of dollars to build fresh data centers to train and run generative artificial intelligence systems. This includes tools to facilitate workers write code and consumer-facing services such as Amazon’s Rufus shopping chatbot. It’s straightforward to see why Amazon is pursuing artificial intelligence. Last month, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced that Rufus was on track to escalate Amazon sales by $10 billion a year. “It’s getting better,” he said.
Artificial intelligence systems require significant power, which has forced utilities to turn to coal-fired power plants and other carbon-emitting energy sources to support data center development. The open letter demands that Amazon abandon carbon fuel sources in its data centers, ban the utilize of artificial intelligence technology for surveillance and mass deportations, and stop forcing workers to utilize artificial intelligence in their jobs. “We, the undersigned Amazon employees, have grave concerns about this aggressive rollout at a time of global rise in authoritarianism and our most critical years in reversing the climate crisis,” the letter reads.