Amazon has announced the widespread layoffs of 14,000 corporate employees to make investments in generative artificial intelligence.

In an effort to make the company less bureaucratic, Amazon aims to replace the workers in their position with AI so the workers can be placed elsewhere. However, this goal has not been accurately achieved, forcing citizens to find new jobs that are separate from Amazon entirely.

The decision to lay off workers is not only severely insensitive to the families that may be struggling to survive, but also forcing society to accept the conversation of AI replacing humans. The job market is already rapidly deteriorating, making it harder for students out of high school and college to gain long-term employment.

With Amazon utilizing AI, people are beginning to fear that the jobs they once held will no longer be accessible to them. In light of the government shutdown, this realization is especially hard to swallow, since many of the things that lower-income citizens rely on are actively being taken away or destroyed, such as SNAP benefits.

It is important for us to have conversations about the inclusion of AI in our lives. While some people attempt to ignore its existence entirely, we cannot deny the idea that much of what we know will be greatly changed once the advancement of technology is prioritized.