Amazon's CEO says its AI tool has saved a crazy amount of time

• Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said Amazon Q, an AI assistant, drastically reduced software-upgrade times.
• Jassy said that's saved the equivalent of thousands of years of work, plus millions of dollars.
• AI tools can enhance productivity across industries, including marketing and sales.

Generative AI has some workers worried that it'll take their jobs. But before that, it looks like it's making some software-engineering tasks a lot easier.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in a LinkedIn post on Thursday that the company was able to integrate Amazon Q, its generative-AI assistant, into its internal systems to update its foundational software.

The result has been a "game changer," Jassy said.

"The average time to upgrade an application to Java 17 plummeted from what's typically 50 developer-days to just a few hours," he wrote. "We estimate this has saved us the equivalent of 4,500 developer-years of work (yes, that number is crazy but, real)."

The AI not only is fast but also seems pretty accurate, according to his post. Amazon developers shipped 79% of the AI-generated code reviews without any additional changes, Jassy wrote.

"The benefits go beyond how much effort we've saved developers," he said. "The upgrades have enhanced security and reduced infrastructure costs, providing an estimated $260M in annualized efficiency gains."

Jassy's comments seem to tie into an often used argument when it comes to artificial intelligence: It helps free up time otherwise used on boring but necessary jobs.

"One of the most tedious (but critical tasks) for software development teams is updating foundational software," he wrote. "This work is either dreaded or put off for more exciting work—or both."

But while Amazon may be enjoying the increased productivity, developers might be concerned that the AI's efficiency will reduce the need for human workers.

Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman recently said in an internal meeting that software engineers may have to develop other skills in light of the proliferation of AI in coding.

"If you go forward 24 months from now, or some amount of time — I can't exactly predict where it is — it's possible that most developers are not coding," he said.

And Garman is not the first top executive to express this warning. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said last year that "everyone is a programmer now" because of AI coding tools. Emad Mostaque, Stability AI's former CEO, even predicted that there would be "no programmers in five years."

Developers are not the only ones being hit with an extinction scare. Klarna's CEO, Sebastian Siemiatkowski, said in a now deleted tweet that the fintech firm would save $10 million this year by using generative AI to do the marketing work human employees previously did.

"We're spending less on photographers, image banks, and marketing agencies," he wrote. "Our in-house marketing team is HALF the size it was last year but is producing MORE!"

While Siemiatkowski received intense backlash, a press release backed his enthusiasm for AI, saying that Klarna had "generated over 1,000 images in the first three months of 2024 using genAI, reducing the image development cycle from 6 weeks to just 7 days."

US Bank's chief marketing officer, Michael Lacorazza, previously told Business Insider that the company was able to use generative AI to "shave about 2 ½ months off" the development cycle for a new brand campaign.

Despite the impressive efficiency increases, Lacorazza reassured workers, saying he viewed generative AI as "not a replacement for humanity but an enabler for humanity."

Meanwhile, Jassy said that Amazon would continue using Amazon Q.

He said: "Not only do our Amazon teams plan to use this transformation capability more, but our Q team plans to add more transformations for developers to leverage."