AWS CEO says AI will 'change' jobs and explains why company is hiring 11,000 interns

Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman has rejected the fears that artificial intelligence (AI) will eliminate certain roles, arguing that AI will ‘change’ jobs, not wipe them out. He also explained the reason why young talent remains a priority for the company. At Amazon’s What's Next with AWS event in April, Garman revealed that the company is hiring 11,000 interns this year. “If you believe that half of jobs get wiped out, the whole economy collapses on itself. Everything goes away. You’re not going to have AI, and then you have to go back to those other jobs at some point. The math doesn’t work out,” Garman said on an episode of the Platformer podcast released on Tuesday (June 23). His take came amid forecasts like the one made by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who had warned that AI could eliminate up to half of all entry-level office jobs. ‘Change, not collapse’: AWS CEO Matt Garman on jobs Garman explains the difference between jobs being wiped out and jobs being changed with an example of Microsoft Excel. When spreadsheet software arrived, it largely replaced workers who spent their days doing calculations by hand. Those jobs did not disappear because workers adapted, learned the new tools, and the nature of their roles shifted. “I do think that half of white-collar jobs may change, but wipe out and change are different,” he said. Why Amazon is still betting on young talent What makes Garman’s position particularly notable is that Amazon is backing it with real hiring decisions. The company plans to bring on 11,000 interns and recent graduates this year. Amazon also employs more software developers today than it did two years ago even as AI coding tools have become significantly more capable during that same period. For Garman, young workers are an advantage in an AI-driven world. “When you talk about entry-level jobs, number one, they're your cheapest employees," he said, further noting, “They haven't learned bad habits, you can teach them the culture, they're willing to learn the new tools, they're some of the very best employees you can possibly have.”Beyond the economics, he pointed to amount of energy that youngsters bring. “They come in with an energy and excitement, a new view on things. If you just have the exact same people that you've had for the last 15 years, you don't get that energy and excitement and new ideas," Garman said. Garman’s optimism comes as Amazon has cut around 30,000 jobs in the last 7 months. CEO Andy Jassy, who is currently in India, has been blunt that AI-driven efficiency gains will eventually reduce parts of the company's corporate headcount.