Amazon Accidentally Confirms New Round of Layoffs
Amazon mistakenly sent an email confirming a new round of global layoffs to employees on Tuesday, according to the BBC. The email, drafted by Colleen Aubrey, a senior vice president at Amazon Web Services (AWS), was included as part of a calendar invitation sent by an executive assistant to a number of Amazon workers.
The email referred to layoffs impacting employees in the US, Canada, and Costa Rica as part of an effort to "strengthen the company," according to the BBC. The message, which was quickly cancelled, was apparently shared by mistake. An Amazon spokesman declined to comment on the accidental disclosure. The title of the invitation was "Send proj," according to the BBC.
The accidental confirmation comes as another tech giant, Cisco Systems, warns of potential "carnage" amidst the artificial intelligence boom. Chuck Robbins, chairman and chief executive of Cisco Systems, told the BBC that AI will "change everything" and be "bigger than the internet," but cautioned that the current market is likely a bubble and some companies "won't make it." Robbins also noted that AI could change or eliminate some jobs, particularly in customer service.
In other tech news, TikTok reached a settlement just hours before a landmark social media addiction trial was set to begin in California, according to the BBC. The plaintiff, a 20-year-old woman identified by the initials KGM, alleged that the design of the platform's algorithms led to her addiction and negatively affected her mental health. The Social Media Victims Law Center stated that "the parties are pleased to have reached an amicable resolution of this dispute," but the terms of the settlement remain confidential. The defendants now include Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, and YouTube parent company Google.
Meanwhile, TikTok US denied claims that it is censoring content after users reported glitches on the video streaming platform, according to the BBC. A spokesperson for TikTok US reiterated an earlier statement, pointing to technical issues as the reason for the problems since it became a separate American entity last week. "We've made significant progress in recovering our US infrastructure with our US data center partner," the spokesperson said. "However, the US user experience may still have some technical issues, including when posting new content."
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