Amazon chief executive Andy Jassy has urged young people to embrace artificial intelligence while protecting the critical thinking and judgement that he says will remain essential in the workplace.
Speaking on The a16z Show, Jassy said AI would affect almost every aspect of working life and should not be avoided. His advice also applies to his own children, aged 25 and 22, who are navigating the changing technology landscape.
“You can’t run away from it and you can’t wish it away,” Jassy said. “It’s going to be incredibly impactful in your life in every experience that you try and use in your work, and it will allow you to invent in ways that just weren’t possible for us before.”
Jassy, who succeeded Jeff Bezos as Amazon CEO in 2021, said people from all backgrounds should learn how AI works and experiment with its capabilities, rather than assuming it is relevant only to developers or technology specialists.
“You need to learn about it, educate yourself, use it a lot. Try doing things outside your comfort zone,” he said. “Neither of my kids was a developer, but they’ve used AI to build applications.”
Andy Jassy says AI should assist, not replace, critical thinking
The Amazon chief said AI could remove much of the preliminary work involved in education and business, including reading, research and note-taking. He argued that the technology could bring people to an informed starting point more quickly.
But he warned that relying too heavily on AI-generated writing could expose weaknesses in a person’s thinking. Text produced by the technology can appear “not quite right” when its component parts do not fit together properly, he said.
“I still think you’re going to need human judgment and ingenuity and invention and experimentation and thinking about how all the pieces come together to end up building amazing experiences and businesses,” Jassy said.
He added: “I think you want to use the tools, and they’re going to be huge aids, but I still think critical reasoning and thinking is going to be very important in everything we do.”
Jassy’s comments come as other business leaders have also highlighted independent thought as an important skill in an AI-led workplace.
Daniel Lubetzky, the founder of KIND bars and a Shark Tank investor, has said critical thinking will be in growing demand and encouraged young people to develop curiosity and creativity. He advised them to study history and philosophy and repeatedly question the assumptions behind what they encounter.
Matt Garman, chief executive of Amazon Web Services, has similarly identified creativity, critical thinking and flexibility as skills young workers will need as AI changes the nature of their jobs.
