More than 1,000 Amazon employees have issued a stark warning about the company’s accelerating use of artificial intelligence.
The workers are arguing in an open letter that Amazon’s “all-costs justified, warp speed” rollout threatens “democracy, our jobs, and the earth.”
The letter, published this week and signed anonymously, marks one of the largest collective employee critiques of Amazon’s AI strategy to date. It comes only a month after the company confirmed sweeping layoffs tied to its increasing automation efforts.
The signatories span much of Amazon’s workforce, including warehouse associates, software engineers and product managers. They are joined by more than 2,400 additional workers from Meta, Google, Apple and Microsoft, underscoring a growing cross-industry unease over how major tech firms are deploying powerful AI tools without adequate oversight or worker input.
The letter was spearheaded by members of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, a well-known internal advocacy group that has frequently pressed company leadership on sustainability and labor issues. One organizer said workers felt compelled to intervene after witnessing emerging problems with AI tools, alongside mounting environmental concerns related to Amazon’s expanding data-center footprint.
“I signed the letter because of leadership’s increasing emphasis on arbitrary productivity metrics and quotas, using AI as justification to push myself and my colleagues to work longer hours and push out more projects on tighter deadlines,” said a senior software engineer who has spent more than a decade at the company.
Rising tensions
At the heart of the letter is an accusation that Amazon is undermining its own climate pledges in its race to build and deploy next-generation AI systems. The employees claim that Amazon’s annual emissions have “grown roughly 35% since 2019,” despite the company’s public commitment that same year to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2040.
Generative AI systems, including large language models, require enormous computational power. That need translates into unprecedented demand for electricity and water, prompting global concerns that the tech industry’s AI boom could collide with climate goals. Amazon, like other companies in the sector, has announced a wave of new data-center projects to support its AI expansion. These include a $15 billion build-out in northern Indiana and at least $3 billion in Mississippi.
Workers warn that these investments will lock the company—and the regions where it operates—into long-term dependence on fossil fuels. They say many of the data centers are planned for areas where electricity grids still rely heavily on coal or natural gas, and where the additional load could delay the retirement of aging coal plants or require constructing new gas-fired facilities.
“‘AI’ is being used as a magic word that is code for less worker power, hoarding of more resources, and making an uninformed gamble on high energy demand computer chips magically saving us from climate change,” said an Amazon customer researcher. The researcher added that Amazon’s strategy risks accelerating both surveillance practices and environmental strain: “They are investing fossil fuel energy draining data centers for AI that is intended to surveil, exploit, and squeeze every extra cent out of customers, communities, and government agencies.”
Amazon refuted these claims. Spokesperson Brad Glasser said Amazon remains the “world’s largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy for five consecutive years,” pointing to more than 600 renewable projects worldwide. Glasser said the company is also making significant investments in nuclear energy, including small modular reactors, describing these efforts as “concrete actions demonstrating real progress” toward its 2040 climate pledge.
Productivity pressure and fears of job loss
Beyond environmental strain, employees say Amazon’s AI push is reshaping workplace expectations in ways that threaten job stability and worker well-being. Three employees told the Guardian they are facing increasing pressure to use AI tools to accelerate output.
“I’m getting messaging from my direct manager and [from] all the way up the chain, about how I should be using AI for coding, for writing, for basically all of my day-to-day tasks,” said a software engineer of more than two years. She said she had recently been told her team was “expected to do twice as much work because of AI tools,” despite the tools not reliably improving productivity. “The tools are just not making up that gap,” she said.
Workers say the pressure to adopt AI is often paired with implicit or explicit threats: fall behind in AI-assisted productivity, they fear, and they could be next in line for layoffs.
The letter calls for Amazon to create non-managerial working groups with meaningful influence over how AI is implemented, how job cuts tied to automation are handled and how environmental externalities are mitigated. Employees argue that decisions about AI deployment should not be made solely by executives or technical leadership but must include the people who use the systems daily and who face the consequences when they fail.
Past attempts to integrate AI into complex workflows, some workers say, have already shown limitations. One senior engineer described spending weeks cleaning up after a high-ranking colleague attempted to use an AI coding tool to handle a complicated project. “None of it worked and he didn’t understand why – starting from scratch would have actually been easier,” he said.
Growing calls for worker input in the AI wra
Despite their criticism, workers insist they are not opposed to AI itself. Many expressed enthusiasm about responsible AI research and the possibility that the technology could benefit climate efforts or reduce manual labor. Their concern, they say, is that current deployment practices prioritize profit and speed above sustainability, safety and democratic oversight.
“There is a culture of fear around openly discussing the drawbacks of AI at work,” said the senior software engineer. “One thing the letter is setting out to accomplish is to show our colleagues that many of us feel this way and that another path is possible.”
The open letter adds to a growing push across the tech industry for greater transparency, worker participation and public accountability in the development of AI systems. With Amazon’s influence touching retail, logistics, cloud computing and government contracting, the employees argue the stakes are uniquely high—not just for their own jobs, but for energy systems, consumer rights and democratic stability.
Whether the company engages directly with these demands remains to be seen. But the workers’ decision to speak collectively—and across multiple major tech firms—signals a new phase in the debate over how AI should reshape society and who gets a say in the process.
The US government’s push to catch up in the AI race just got a significant power boost, courtesy of Amazon’s AI investment.