Amazon Cloud Boss Calls Replacing Junior Workers With AI 'Dumbest' Idea

Amid the recent spate of doom and gloom warnings about workers being replaced by the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI), Amazon's Web Services CEO, Matt Garman, has issued a contrarian take. Ms Garman said business leaders looking to leverage AI to replace junior employees was one of the "dumbest things" he has ever heard.

"They're probably the least expensive employees you have. They're the most leaned into your AI tools," said Mr Garman on an episode of the "Matthew Berman" podcast.

"How's that going to work when you go like 10 years in the future and you have no one that has built up or learned anything?"

The Amazon cloud boss suggested that companies keep hiring graduates and teaching them how to build software, break down problems and adopt the best practices. He also suggested that students focus on polishing their critical thinking skills instead of specialising in one field that might become obsolete within the next few decades due to AI.

"If you spend all of your time learning one specific thing and you're like, 'That's the thing I'm going to be expert at for the next 30 years,' I can promise you that's not going to be valuable 30 years from now," he said.

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AI leaders issue warnings

Mr Garman's statements are in contrast to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's recent assertion that AI is already beginning to act like junior-level coworkers.

"AI is already beginning to act like junior-level "You hear people that talk about their job now is to assign work to a bunch of agents, look at the quality, figure out how it fits together, give feedback, and it sounds a lot like how they work with a team of still relatively junior employees," Mr Altman said in June.

In May, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned that AI could wipe out 50 per cent of entry-level white-collar jobs within the next five years.

"We, as the producers of this technology, have a duty and an obligation to be honest about what is coming. I don't think this is on people's radar," said Mr Amodei.

According to the Anthropic boss, unemployment could increase by 10 per cent to 20 per cent over the next five years, with most of the people 'unaware' about what was coming. "Most of them are unaware that this is about to happen. It sounds crazy, and people just don't believe it," he said.