As Silicon Valley debates whether artificial intelligence will eliminate millions of office jobs, the executive who runs Amazon’s cloud business pushed back hard this week. Matt Garman, the CEO of Amazon Web Services (AWS), said on the Platformer podcast, released Tuesday, June 23, that predictions of mass white-collar job losses don’t hold up — and pointed to Amazon’s own hiring as proof.

The company plans to bring on roughly 11,000 interns and early-career employees globally this year, Garman said, and Amazon now employs more software developers than it did two years ago, even as AI coding tools have grown far more capable. That hiring, he argued, reflects a simple belief: AI will change jobs, not erase them.

Garman was responding directly to a widely discussed warning from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who has predicted that AI could wipe out up to half of entry-level white-collar jobs within five years. Garman said he sees the technology differently. “Wipe out” and “change” are not the same thing, he argued, comparing the moment to the spread of spreadsheet software decades ago. Programs like Microsoft Excel eliminated the work of people who calculated figures by hand, but those workers learned new tools and found new roles. New technology, he said, has historically created jobs even as it has eliminated others.

He also made a practical case for hiring young workers. Entry-level employees are a company’s least expensive hires, Garman noted, and they haven’t picked up bad habits, are eager to learn new tools, and bring fresh energy and ideas that established teams often lack. Garman has a personal stake in the argument — he joined Amazon as an intern himself before spending nearly two decades climbing to the top of its most profitable division.

The optimism comes with real complications. Amazon has cut thousands of corporate jobs over the past year, and CEO Andy Jassy has said AI-driven efficiency will eventually shrink parts of the company’s white-collar workforce. Amazon is also in the business of selling AI tools that perform office work — including software agents for coding, cybersecurity and customer service, as well as an AI system capable of conducting job interviews without human involvement. That makes its cloud chief’s confidence about the future of human workers all the more notable.

Garman isn’t alone among executives defending entry-level hiring. Cognizant CEO Ravi Kumar recently said his company hired 20,000 entry-level graduates in 2025 and expects to expand that number, dismissing what he called “fearmongering” about a collapse in white-collar employment. IBM has also said it plans to significantly increase entry-level hiring after concluding that relying too heavily on AI-driven cost cutting is not a sustainable way to build a future talent pipeline.

The disagreement matters far beyond the technology sector. For millions of students and recent graduates entering a labor market being reshaped by AI, the question of whether companies will continue hiring at the bottom rung is deeply personal. If businesses stop training young workers today, they may find themselves without experienced professionals tomorrow — a point Garman and several other executives have repeatedly emphasized.

The middle ground may be that both sides are partly right. Garman himself acknowledged that the nature of office work is changing rapidly. He recently told employees that what their jobs looked like two years ago is dramatically different from what they will look like two years from now. Routine administrative work is increasingly being automated, while the most valuable employees are becoming those who can learn quickly, adapt to new technology, think critically and use AI as a productivity tool rather than view it as a replacement.

The debate also reflects a broader question facing employers worldwide. Companies are investing billions of dollars in AI to improve efficiency, reduce repetitive work and accelerate software development. At the same time, they continue competing aggressively for highly skilled engineers, data scientists, cybersecurity professionals and business leaders who know how to deploy those technologies effectively. Rather than eliminating talent, many executives believe AI is simply changing which skills command the highest value.

For employees, that means technical literacy is becoming increasingly important regardless of profession. Understanding how to work alongside AI tools is rapidly becoming as fundamental as learning email, spreadsheets and presentation software were for previous generations. Workers who embrace those tools may find themselves becoming more productive and valuable, while those who resist the transition risk falling behind as workplaces evolve.

For now, Amazon’s message to young workers was intended to be reassuring: the jobs are not disappearing, even if they are being fundamentally rewired. Whether the broader economy ultimately follows that path — or whether corporate efficiency efforts lead to a more dramatic restructuring of office work — is likely to become one of the defining labor-market questions of the AI era.

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