An expert in labor law explains the unusual appeal of Amazon employees to management

An unusual letter signed by over 1,000 Amazon employees, from warehouse workers to software engineers, was recently published, demanding that the company’s management stop the AI ​​race.

Amazon, for its part, rejects the accusations. In this tension, between the innovation and the experience of the workers in the field, a debate is created that embodies the high-tech dilemma of the current era.

In my opinion, the fact that this is a letter initiated by the employees, and not an external audit by the academy or the regulator, is the heart of the story. For years, the image of high-tech workers was that of passive beneficiaries of the fruits of the digital revolution: high wages, pampering conditions and an almost automatic identification with the company’s business goals.

Here a complete reversal takes place: the same people who develop the technology, who deeply understand its capabilities, insist on setting a moral limit for those who employ them.

It is no longer a fight over wages and working conditions, but a dispute over the nature of the use of the technology they themselves create. A kind of warning sign, reminding company managers that the main question is not only what the AI ​​knows how to do, but in which hands it is and for what purposes it is being developed.

From this also derives the special responsibility of other high-tech companies. If employees at one of the most influential companies in the world feel this way, there is no reason to assume that other companies will be immune to the same trends.

On the contrary, the more the market moves towards AI solutions as a standard, the greater the danger that innovation at any cost will become the norm, and the critical voice will come from within.

The letter from the Amazon employees should serve as a wake-up call to the entire high-tech industry: no more convenient separation between business and ideology. Those who employ engineers who are able to build such powerful systems must recognize that they also bring with them a set of values, moral questions and an expectation to influence the way their creation is used. Those who ignore this voice may find that their technology is indeed more advanced than ever, but the trust of the people who keep it alive is eroding.