It is reassuring to learn that an important industrial figure is aware that you need to educate and train actual humans if you want your company to thrive in the future.

Pseudo-AI can eventually be a useful crutch, but it is nothing but a crutch. If you don't have a human to ask the proper questions, pseudo-AI will never be able to answer (whether right or, more likely, wrong).

Unfortunately, all the educators who were concerned with teaching people to think rather than simply training them to pass exams were jettisoned from the system because qualitative results are hard to measure.

Probably just as well for AWS, though, as the rapid deployment of AI seems to depend on an excess of credulity.

Become plumbers or electricians, because these works won't be easily replaced by AI thanks to some beancounter who thinks it can save more money for the shareholders.

At least until there is a glut of plumbers and electricians because all the high school kids who planned on going into computer science see what's going to happen to the job prospects of new CS grads in the next few years.

The plumber who's just been here in the European south used to be a chemical engineer. He's a qualified electrician as well. It's already getting to the stage where one trade isn't sufficient to keep you busy full time.

I fully appreciate the sentiment, but heartilly disagree with it. AI is middleware, it does good things when people learn how to make the most of it. That's what kids need to do - learn how to use it and build and achieve great things with it. Never opt out.

Ahh - but C-Suite don't care. It's one less wage to pay.

I see fewer people being employed at junior levels. That leads to less people to train. You're left looking for people at a level no-one has been trained to.

WE know AI is just a tool. Many of us are smart enough to know when that tool is not working properly or effectively. If we're not training new talent, then I can only see this situation getting worse.

Kind of like automation and the mess that can make. I've interviewed candidates that were totally unable to explain how to diagnose/fix a broken system because 'there was no automation to do it for them'.

As a plumber or electrician you can legit earn substantially more money than an engineer, especially in the UK without having to take massive student loan and spend years learning the stuff.

“How's that going to work when ten years in the future you have no one that has learned anything,”

You will end up with politicians, they know bugger all.

And firing them early IS "teaching them ... just as much as you ever have": specifically "you are nothing to us".

"If you don't come with useful skills pre-installed, we're not going to teach you - why do you think we put 'needs 5 years experience of (tech released last year)' in our job ads for your junior position?"

...useful skills pre-installed...

They should invest in genetically engineered engineers to engineer pre-installed engineering skills (with free thought genetically removed, of course).

Of course you don't fire your cheapest staff. You fire your most expensive staff and replace them with AI operated by the cheapest staff!

That is the only way to continue the race to the bottom and dig that bigger and deeper hole so you may continue the race to the bottom just a moment longer.

Of course you don't fire your cheapest staff. You fire your most expensive staff and replace them with AI operated by the cheapest staff!

Precisely.

How long before the more insightful of these inexpensive AI wranglers see the proverbial writing on the wall and sod off well before becoming experienced, expensive staff destined for the chop. Presumably that exodus would thin the ranks of the inexpensive to a residue of the merely cheap.

Difficult to see how anyone sufficiently clever to get into a University (or even able to tie their shoelaces) would seriously contemplate a career in development (or IT generally) nowadays.

if he lives up to his word and hires those kids - to become experienced developers using AI in their workflow where it adds value, and think for themselves where it counts.

These kids could become the true experts on AI usage in the future - and recognize AI compised rubbish in a heartbeat.

But I fear some other C** role and/or the shareholders may push him to act differently.

One can only hope for the best.

Finally a C-suite with some common sense, but then again AWS will be fine even if (when) the AI bubble bursts. cf the constant stream of bullshit from MANTA (Musk, Altman, Nadella, Thiel and Amodei)

The AWS boss calls firing juniors “the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” and the article gushes like it’s some grand defence of workers. But read it carefully: it’s not about people at all - it’s about supply chain management. Juniors aren’t humans with careers or dignity, they’re “the cheapest employees you have,” raw material to be stockpiled so you’ve got mid-levels to promote later.

Even the fluffy bit about “teaching kids how to think” isn’t about education - it’s about keeping labour pliable, endlessly reskilled, forever adaptable to whatever AWS wants this quarter. No stable trades, no lasting expertise, just an obedient workforce on tap.

It’s the language of commodities: people as cheap inputs in a corporate machine, to be moulded, recycled, and replaced.

I suspect this is desperate claw-back from the previous "AI will replace workers" pitch due to the dramatic share price drop in AI company valuations over the last few days.

As a sales strategy, telling the very people who are the early adopters and evangalists of any new technology that they were worthless and that AI was going to replace them, was not the smartest move in the world.