[[{“value”:”The one thing N. Lee Plumb knows for sure that being laid off from Amazon last week wasn’t a failure to get on board with the company’s artificial intelligence plans.
Plumb, his team’s head of “AI enablement,” says he was so prolific in his use of Amazon’s new AI coding tool that the company flagged him as one of its top users.
Many assumed Amazon’s 16,000 corporate layoffs announced last week reflected CEO Andy Jassy’s push to “reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.”
But like other companies that have tied workforce changes to AI – including Expedia, Pinterest and Dow last week – it can be hard for economists, or individual employees like Plumb, to know if AI is the real reason behind the layoffs or if it’s the message a company wants to tell Wall Street.
“AI has to drive a return on investment,” said Plumb, who worked at Amazon for eight years. “When you reduce headcount, you’ve demonstrated efficiency, you ..”}]]
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