Amazon Web Services building internal AI agents to automate functions after staff cuts
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The news: Amazon Web Services (AWS) is developing AI agents to automate functions in its sales, business development and other groups from which it has recently cut jobs, according to sources cited by The Information.
The context: One such agent helps sales employees offer customers fast responses to technical questions, handling some of the workload of thousands of AWS technical specialists. Technical specialists were included in Amazon job cuts announced in January this year, a source said.
A spokesperson for AWS confirmed the company is developing an agent which “aggregates specialist knowledge from across AWS,” enabling those employees to “focus on the most complex, high-value customer challenges,” The Information reported.
AWS has also launched an agent to help salespeople coordinate with business partners on cloud customer deals.
Former AWS employees told the masthead that these efforts to automate appear to be targeting the handling of work by groups in the company hit by the recent layoffs.
AWS spokespeople said the company isn’t trying to replace workers with AI but wants to relieve them of repetitive tasks so they can focus on higher-level work.
“These changes were about continuing to strengthen our culture and teams by reducing layers, increasing ownership, and helping reduce bureaucracy to drive speed and ownership”, an AWS spokesperson said. “AI was not the reason behind the vast majority of recent role reductions.”
The source: The Information
