Amazon is warning its employees that artificial intelligence will lead the company to have a smaller workforce in the future.In a blog post sent to employees on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST), Amazon chief executive Andy Jassy said efficiency gains from AI would enable a reduction in the human workforce."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," he wrote.READ MORE:Optus fined $100 million, subject to court approval, over sales tactics to vulnerable customersA maintenance employee works in a robotic warehouse at Amazon's centre of Bretigny-sur-Orge in December 2021.(Thomas Samson/AFP/Getty Images)"It's hard to know exactly where this nets out over time, but in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company," Jassy said.But AI would not just effect change at Amazon, he added.AI "will change how we all work and live," including "billions" of AI agents "across every company and in every imaginable field".However, much of this remains speculative."Many of these agents have yet to be built, but make no mistake, they're coming, and coming fast," Jassy said.He urged employees to view AI as "teammates we can call on at various stages of our work, and that will get wiser and more helpful with more experience."Jassy's message comes after increased warnings from the tech industry about AI's effect on white collar jobs.READ MORE:Bali flights cancelled after major volcano eruptsSurprise entrant to top 10 most trusted brands in AustraliaView GalleryIn May, Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei warned on CNN that the technology would trigger a spike in unemployment, and that it would happen sooner than unprepared political leaders and businesses expected.AI, including tools Anthropic itself is building, could eliminate half of entry-level, white-collar jobs and boost unemployment to as much as 20 per cent in the next one to five years, he told Axios.Critics say these warnings aren't based off much research or evidence and are coming from the people who are poised to profit the most from AI adoption.Daniel Zhao, lead economist and senior manager on Glassdoor's economic research team, fully expects that AI will have a significant impact on the economy and how people work.But how much of an effect it was having on hiring and jobs currently was hard to tease out, he said."The economy and the job market have slowed, and it makes it difficult to disentangle how much of that is being driven by AI," he said, adding that the recent slowdown in hiring activity was likely driven by economic uncertainty.DOWNLOAD THE 9NEWS APP: Stay across all the latest in breaking news, sport, politics and the weather via our news app and get notifications sent straight to your smartphone. Available on theApple App StoreandGoogle Play.