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> Amazon’s ecommerce business has summoned a large group of engineers to a meeting on Tuesday for a “deep dive” into a spate of outages, including incidents tie

> Amazon’s ecommerce business has summoned a large group of engineers to a meeting on Tuesday for a “deep dive” into a spate of outages, including incidents tied to the use of AI coding tools. > The online retail giant said there had been a “trend of incidents” in recent months, characterised by a “high blast radius” and “Gen-AI assisted changes” among other factors, according to a briefing note for the meeting seen by the FT. > Under “contributing factors” the note included “novel GenAI usage for which best practices and safeguards are not yet fully established”. > “Folks, as you likely know, the availability of the site and related infrastructure has not been good recently,” Dave Treadwell, a senior vice-president at the group, told employees in an email, also seen by the FT.

VirusNewbie 8mo ago
GenAI at fault, and nothing to do with amazon laying off 30k people and having an overall shitty culture where people mostly don’t want to stay?
- jiggawatts 8mo ago
  Also, managers are incentivised to force AI onto the remaining staff to “boost productivity” but of course they won’t accept any of the responsibility or blame for that decision.
  - zihotki 8mo ago
    Just tell the employees to make AI fully adopted in SDLC and make it secure and reliable. Don't make mistakes. If it works for models, why not humans? /s
- aerhardt 8mo ago
  Maybe both, and possibly other causes too, but allow us a moment to revel in the schadenfreude of AI code slop at hyperscale, will you?
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- applfanboysbgon 8mo ago
  > GenAI at fault, and nothing to do with amazon laying off 30k people GenAI is literally the direct reasoning they used for laying off 30k people. > “As we roll out more Generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done. We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs,” [Amazon CEO Andy Jassy] bluntly admitted.
  - spwa4 8mo ago
    There is a long history of people blaming AI for not being able something totally unfair and me and I do believe quite a lot of probably somewhat older ML practitioners are seriously tired of that constantly happening. Amazon is prioritizing investment into data center expansion over paying employees. And ML ... is present in the building, and about as involved in the firings as the cleaning staff is, only people are scared of AI and so it gets blamed for everything. The firings are driven by imho misguided financial engineering, and it sure as hell is not being being done by ML. But what is reported? Management firing people? ML. Engineering screwing up the uptime? ML. Someone screws up their job? ML. Don't you know? ML is killing people in Iran today. Not mullahs. Not the military. ML. Obviously that's where the responsibility lies ... Usually blaming ML is like suddenly coming up with conspiracy theories like here, or impossible suddenly added requirements, and usually utterly ridiculous ones (like criticizing Deep Blue for not being able to play poker, yes I realize I'm old, but it's a bit like criticizing the very best competition canoe on the planet for it's disappointing spaceflight capabilities) Like here: large blast radius AI-assisted outages ... we've all written software, and we all know the problem here: THEIR TESTS SUCK. Probably because they fired all the good SREs for insisting software teams spend time on tests, or demanding integration test failures are fixed before shipping the software. By the way: I'd like to point out that in most/all industries where jobs are lost on a large scale the situation is like the Amazon situation: ML is not even remotely involved. So while I get the criticism, it doesn't work like that. The Auto industry first got blasted with very traditional engineering, which worked and depended on very old style mathematics. What's happening in factory automation is 99.9% 3d geometry (to the point that ML, is actually a simplification of the problem). Then the auto industry got blasted with what every industry got blasted with: stuck in demand-limited markets. Every car company can easily build 10x more cars next year, but there's no point: nobody will buy them. So the only thing worth doing for these companies is to produce cheaper ... and that means getting rid of people (when end-to-end taxes on income in Europe are 60-85% and actually rising). With only a few exceptions, these companies find ML too expensive for projects. So while I understand "we're defending our jobs", it's misguided ... the big job losses in the west have nothing to do with ML. MAYBE those are coming, but large job losses have been predicted in the last 50 AI "revolutions". 49 times that was wrong. And the actual problem is really a return to 99.9% of history: when it comes to doing what is needed to keep society going 10%, maybe even 1% of people can do it. That means you need something for the other 90% or 99% to do. The solution is the only thing that has helped in the past: having the government put on huge public works. From building the pyramids to the Sagrada Familia (and yes, wars. But let's please not do that), or ridiculous engineering projects like Europe and America's rail networks. There's a stable in the Italian alps that has a private rail connection. So fix the problem. I don't know: build a large cathedral in Washington or something. Hell, hire people to make sure it has a depiction of the last supper where every square micrometer of the painting was designed by an AI with 1000-member engineering team, so people can spend their entire life looking at the painting with a microscope and find new details every day. Let's do something "great", in the sense of an enormous effort. Fly 100 missions to Alpha Centauri. Fix the demand-limited issue the economy has. "Do more with more". And stop blaming ML. Hell, I'm currently in an old European city filled with 200-year old buildings. Quaint. Cool. Except ... not really. 90% of these buildings suck. Can we just rebuild 95% of ... all European capitals? Every building that is way too old and has no reason whatsoever to be preserved other than it's currently slightly cheaper ... can we please just rebuild them better? Do stuff like that.
- nixass 8mo ago
  Absolutely correct. Now let's drop anothet few billions to make AI better and avoid such mistakes in the future. And we might lay off some more folks to make room in a budget for more AI
- cratermoon 8mo ago
  Those two facts are not mutually exclusive. Laying off 30K people and pushing the remaining engineers to use the ensloppenator for everything, this is the expected result.
hansmayer 8mo ago
> “Folks, as you likely know, the availability of the site and related infrastructure has not been good recently,” Dave Treadwell, a senior vice-president at the group, told employees in an email, also seen by the FT. Also some SVP over there: '"folks", we'll measure your performance and bonus based on how much you use Gen AI:)'
- rsynnott 8mo ago
  Yeah, “you must use LLMs, but also pls don’t use them for important stuff” is a difficult circle to square.
  - Gud 8mo ago
    Who said you can’t use it for important stuff? Just because SOME people are screwing up doesn’t mean everyone is.
    - hansmayer 8mo ago
      Of course you can use them for whatever you want. Its also not disputable that some people will be more careful than the other. The issue however is that the idiots who pushed for widespread usage of AIs in the companies, i.e. clueless MBAs, have also pushed them onto exactly the types you are mentioning - the ones who will screw things over because they are incompetent or don't care, or most likely - are both of those things. So it's not a criticism of people who are careful in their usage of LLMs in critical scenarios - it's a criticism of the morons who bought into the AI hype and really believe an LLM will produce equally great terraform code previously written by 10 engineers at the 1% of the cost.
      - kshacker 8mo ago
        Absolutely. We need to get a Hello, World equivalent of something a person should be able to do with AI before they are allowed to decide AI projects.

VirusNewbie 8mo ago

GenAI at fault, and nothing to do with amazon laying off 30k people and having an overall shitty culture where people mostly don’t want to stay?

jiggawatts 8mo ago
Also, managers are incentivised to force AI onto the remaining staff to “boost productivity” but of course they won’t accept any of the responsibility or blame for that decision.
- zihotki 8mo ago
  Just tell the employees to make AI fully adopted in SDLC and make it secure and reliable. Don't make mistakes. If it works for models, why not humans? /s
aerhardt 8mo ago
Maybe both, and possibly other causes too, but allow us a moment to revel in the schadenfreude of AI code slop at hyperscale, will you?
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
applfanboysbgon 8mo ago
> GenAI at fault, and nothing to do with amazon laying off 30k people GenAI is literally the direct reasoning they used for laying off 30k people. > “As we roll out more Generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done. We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs,” [Amazon CEO Andy Jassy] bluntly admitted.
- spwa4 8mo ago
  There is a long history of people blaming AI for not being able something totally unfair and me and I do believe quite a lot of probably somewhat older ML practitioners are seriously tired of that constantly happening. Amazon is prioritizing investment into data center expansion over paying employees. And ML ... is present in the building, and about as involved in the firings as the cleaning staff is, only people are scared of AI and so it gets blamed for everything. The firings are driven by imho misguided financial engineering, and it sure as hell is not being being done by ML. But what is reported? Management firing people? ML. Engineering screwing up the uptime? ML. Someone screws up their job? ML. Don't you know? ML is killing people in Iran today. Not mullahs. Not the military. ML. Obviously that's where the responsibility lies ... Usually blaming ML is like suddenly coming up with conspiracy theories like here, or impossible suddenly added requirements, and usually utterly ridiculous ones (like criticizing Deep Blue for not being able to play poker, yes I realize I'm old, but it's a bit like criticizing the very best competition canoe on the planet for it's disappointing spaceflight capabilities) Like here: large blast radius AI-assisted outages ... we've all written software, and we all know the problem here: THEIR TESTS SUCK. Probably because they fired all the good SREs for insisting software teams spend time on tests, or demanding integration test failures are fixed before shipping the software. By the way: I'd like to point out that in most/all industries where jobs are lost on a large scale the situation is like the Amazon situation: ML is not even remotely involved. So while I get the criticism, it doesn't work like that. The Auto industry first got blasted with very traditional engineering, which worked and depended on very old style mathematics. What's happening in factory automation is 99.9% 3d geometry (to the point that ML, is actually a simplification of the problem). Then the auto industry got blasted with what every industry got blasted with: stuck in demand-limited markets. Every car company can easily build 10x more cars next year, but there's no point: nobody will buy them. So the only thing worth doing for these companies is to produce cheaper ... and that means getting rid of people (when end-to-end taxes on income in Europe are 60-85% and actually rising). With only a few exceptions, these companies find ML too expensive for projects. So while I understand "we're defending our jobs", it's misguided ... the big job losses in the west have nothing to do with ML. MAYBE those are coming, but large job losses have been predicted in the last 50 AI "revolutions". 49 times that was wrong. And the actual problem is really a return to 99.9% of history: when it comes to doing what is needed to keep society going 10%, maybe even 1% of people can do it. That means you need something for the other 90% or 99% to do. The solution is the only thing that has helped in the past: having the government put on huge public works. From building the pyramids to the Sagrada Familia (and yes, wars. But let's please not do that), or ridiculous engineering projects like Europe and America's rail networks. There's a stable in the Italian alps that has a private rail connection. So fix the problem. I don't know: build a large cathedral in Washington or something. Hell, hire people to make sure it has a depiction of the last supper where every square micrometer of the painting was designed by an AI with 1000-member engineering team, so people can spend their entire life looking at the painting with a microscope and find new details every day. Let's do something "great", in the sense of an enormous effort. Fly 100 missions to Alpha Centauri. Fix the demand-limited issue the economy has. "Do more with more". And stop blaming ML. Hell, I'm currently in an old European city filled with 200-year old buildings. Quaint. Cool. Except ... not really. 90% of these buildings suck. Can we just rebuild 95% of ... all European capitals? Every building that is way too old and has no reason whatsoever to be preserved other than it's currently slightly cheaper ... can we please just rebuild them better? Do stuff like that.
nixass 8mo ago
Absolutely correct. Now let's drop anothet few billions to make AI better and avoid such mistakes in the future. And we might lay off some more folks to make room in a budget for more AI
cratermoon 8mo ago
Those two facts are not mutually exclusive. Laying off 30K people and pushing the remaining engineers to use the ensloppenator for everything, this is the expected result.

hansmayer 8mo ago

> “Folks, as you likely know, the availability of the site and related infrastructure has not been good recently,” Dave Treadwell, a senior vice-president at the group, told employees in an email, also seen by the FT. Also some SVP over there: '"folks", we'll measure your performance and bonus based on how much you use Gen AI:)'

rsynnott 8mo ago
Yeah, “you must use LLMs, but also pls don’t use them for important stuff” is a difficult circle to square.
- Gud 8mo ago
  Who said you can’t use it for important stuff? Just because SOME people are screwing up doesn’t mean everyone is.
  - hansmayer 8mo ago
    Of course you can use them for whatever you want. Its also not disputable that some people will be more careful than the other. The issue however is that the idiots who pushed for widespread usage of AIs in the companies, i.e. clueless MBAs, have also pushed them onto exactly the types you are mentioning - the ones who will screw things over because they are incompetent or don't care, or most likely - are both of those things. So it's not a criticism of people who are careful in their usage of LLMs in critical scenarios - it's a criticism of the morons who bought into the AI hype and really believe an LLM will produce equally great terraform code previously written by 10 engineers at the 1% of the cost.
    - kshacker 8mo ago
      Absolutely. We need to get a Hello, World equivalent of something a person should be able to do with AI before they are allowed to decide AI projects.