In a year that’s seen artificial intelligence (AI) leap from buzzword to boardroom imperative, the debate over its true cost and promise has reached a fever pitch. Nowhere is this more evident than at Amazon, where over 1,000 employees have signed an open letter to CEO Andy Jassy, sounding the alarm about the company’s aggressive AI push and its potential fallout for both people and the planet. Meanwhile, Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai is urging a different kind of reckoning—one that asks society to adapt and embrace the coming changes, even as jobs are upended and industries transformed by AI’s relentless march.
The Amazon letter, signed anonymously by 1,039 employees as of November 29, 2025, lays out a litany of concerns. According to reporting by Fortune and the BBC, the signatories span the company’s hierarchy, from software engineers and product managers to warehouse associates—and notably, even some of those building Amazon’s AI systems. Their message is unequivocal: the company’s “all-costs-justified, warp-speed approach to AI development will do staggering damage to democracy, to our jobs, and to the earth.”
At the heart of their protest is Amazon’s climate record. Despite a much-publicized pledge to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2040, the employees point out that Amazon’s annual emissions have grown roughly 35% since 2019. The letter blames the AI arms race for widening this gap, highlighting Amazon’s plan to spend $150 billion on new data centers—many of which will be built in drought-stressed regions or areas where their energy needs could keep coal plants running or justify new gas plants. The workers allege that Amazon even killed legislation that would have required its data centers to use clean energy, and criticize the company’s ongoing support for oil and gas drilling through custom AI solutions.
“We have just a few years to stop disastrous levels of warming,” the letter warns, adding, “Amazon is casting aside its climate goals to build AI.” The employees demand a public plan to power all data centers with 100% additional, local renewable energy around the clock, to end AI solutions for fossil fuel companies, and to publish a detailed, science-backed roadmap for meeting climate commitments.
But climate isn’t their only concern. The letter accuses Amazon of using AI to justify layoffs and speedups that have left logistics workers facing “higher expected output and shorter timelines, mandates to build AI tools for wasteful use cases, and massive investment in AI with little investment in career advancement.” The result? Increased surveillance, injuries, and burnout among warehouse staff, all while the company attempts to challenge the National Labor Relations Board’s authority to protect workers’ rights.
The employees also take aim at Amazon’s role in expanding what they describe as a “militarized surveillance state.” They note the company’s collaboration with an autonomous weapons software firm, its provision of cloud services to the Department of Homeland Security and Palantir (which powers mass deportation efforts), and the transformation of its Ring home security system into an “AI-first” product that enables police to request footage. “Amazon, alongside Meta, Microsoft and Google, lobbied to ban state regulation on AI for the next ten years,” the letter alleges, warning that these moves risk ceding enormous power to both government and private entities with little accountability.
In their demands, the employees call for more than just environmental safeguards. They want ethical AI working groups composed of non-managers with real influence over how AI is used, how layoffs are handled, and how to mitigate AI’s collateral effects. They also demand a ban on AI applications for violence, surveillance, or mass deportation, arguing that Amazon should not be enabling civilian surveillance in conflict zones or supporting “a mass deportation machine.”
“We want the promised gains from AI to give everyone more freedom to play and rest, to spend time with family and friends, to be moved by nature, to create, to feel safe being who we are,” the letter states. “This is an incredibly consequential moment in history. It’s time for us to step up and spark a conversation about the real benefits and costs of AI.”
While Amazon’s workforce is raising red flags, tech leaders like Google’s Sundar Pichai are painting a more nuanced—if still sobering—picture of the AI future. In a December 2, 2025 interview with the BBC, Pichai described AI as “the most profound technology humanity is ever working on,” one with “potential for extraordinary benefits,” but also the power to disrupt society on a massive scale.
Pichai didn’t mince words about the impact on jobs. “People will need to adapt, and then there will be areas where it will impact some jobs. So, as a society, I think we need to be having those conversations,” he said. Far from being limited to entry-level or repetitive roles, he suggested, “all jobs could be impacted by AI, including my own as CEO.”
Google’s recent rollout of Gemini 3, hailed by investors and analysts as a major leap over its predecessor, has only heightened the sense of urgency. Since the release of ChatGPT, job postings in the U.S. have fallen by about 32%, according to Federal Reserve data cited by Fortune. The percentage of Gen Z employees at large public tech companies has halved in just two years, and once-stable fields like computer programming are seeing employment lows. Humanoid robots are now being designed to take on physical labor, further fueling anxieties about the future of work.
Yet, Pichai insists that adaptation—not avoidance—is the answer. “I think people who learn to adopt and adapt to AI will do better,” he told the BBC. “It doesn’t matter whether you want to be a teacher, a doctor—all those professions will be around, but the people who will do well in each of those professions are people who learn how to use these tools.”
For young people entering the workforce, the message is both daunting and liberating. There is, according to Pichai, no “golden-ticket” major or profession that will be immune to AI’s reach. Rather than steering kids away from certain fields, he encourages the next generation to “embrace the technology—learn to use it in the context of what you do.”
The divide between Amazon’s workforce and tech’s top executives captures a broader societal tension: how to harness AI’s potential without sacrificing jobs, rights, or the planet’s future. As Pichai noted, “we will have to work through societal disruption.” For Amazon’s employees, that means demanding a seat at the table—and a say in how their company shapes the world with AI.
The choices made by companies like Amazon and Google in the coming years will reverberate far beyond Silicon Valley. Whether AI ushers in a new era of prosperity or deepens existing divides may well depend on how seriously leaders—and the public—take these warnings, and whether adaptation is matched by accountability.
