Amazon layoffs show how AI is coming for India

AMAZON.COM'S LATEST GLOBAL layoffs should come as a singular warning to India. For policymakers dealing with the world's largest youth population, artificial intelligence (AI) suddenly poses a very real risk to jobs, wages, and a white-collar future.

- ANDY MUKHERJEE

The e-commerce and cloud services giant's elimination of 14,000 corporate positions worldwide may not have a large direct impact on its sizeable Indian workforce. The more worrying thing is the kind of occupations at risk: Generative artificial intelligence is starting to affect more than just entry-level computer programming.

Outsourcing hubs like Bengaluru and Hyderabad are already feeling the pinch from AI. But Amazon's cuts may affect finance, marketing, human resources, and tech employees, according to local media reports. That puts many more sectors on notice and validates a growing body of academic work.After parsing nearly 200 years of data on labour markets and technological change, finance scholars at Northwestern University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have concluded that advances in natural-language processing may favour occupations that are lower-educated, lower-paid, and more male-dominated, such as construction and trucking.