SEATTLE — Matt Garman, CEO of Amazon Web Services, responded to warnings about artificial intelligence eliminating jobs by stating that while half of white-collar roles may evolve, they will not be wiped out. Garman emphasized Amazon's commitment to hiring entry-level talent as part of its 2026 internship and graduate hiring plan.

Addressing the economic implications of job displacement, Garman said, "If you believe that half of jobs get wiped out, the whole economy collapses on itself." He added, "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." Regarding the nature of these shifts, Garman stated, "I do think that half of white-collar jobs may change, but wipe out and change are different."

Amazon plans to hire 11,000 interns and recent graduates in 2026. This initiative follows the company's reduction of 14,000 corporate jobs in 2025. By the end of 2025, Amazon employed approximately 1.58 million full- and part-time workers globally, including about 350,000 corporate employees. The company employs more software developers in 2026 than it did in 2024.

Garman outlined the value of new talent, noting that entry-level employees are receptive to learning and integrating into company culture. "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," Garman said. He added, "They come in with an energy and excitement, a new view on things." Conversely, he observed, "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."

The company prioritizes an employee's ability to learn over existing skillsets. "One of the things we start to look for in employees is not the skill set you have, but do you have the ability to learn?" Garman asked. He further inquired, "Do you have the willingness to dive in and learn new things and the agility to reason about problems?" Garman concluded that employees with this mindset contribute to growth: "When you have employees that have that mentality—that I want to learn, I want to lean in and do new things—there's a crazy amount of opportunity in front of us." This approach allows the company "to run really fast, build new businesses, deliver value to our customers, [and] reduce costs."

Previously, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned that AI could eliminate up to half of entry-level office jobs. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman expressed surprise that the impact on such jobs had not been higher. "I'm delighted to be wrong about this," Altman said, adding, "I thought there would have been more impact on entry-level white-collar jobs being eliminated by now than has actually happened."