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Jeff Bezos might be a big fan of artificial intelligence, but according to whispers about internal leaks, his staff at Amazon still aren't convinced. Having evolved from a small bookstore in Bezos' own garage, Amazon is now among the 'Big Five'tech companies and has a current market cap of $2.55 trillion.
Part of Amazon's longevity has been its ability to adapt to new technologies, particularly when it massively expanded its warehouse capacity and Amazon Web Services during the pandemic. Although it reaped the rewards, Jeff Bezos came under fire for streamlining things in the aftermath and initiating layoffs.
Amazon continues to evolve with its network of delivery drones, while Bezos has firmly placed his chips on the importance of AI. Comparing AI to being given a 'bulldozer' when we're used to using a 'shovel', he's also predicted a bright future where we'll start building data centers in space.
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This feels like something that won't help those complaints about Kessler Syndrome.
Even as Amazon powers ahead with its own AI future regardless, there could be dissent in the ranks. According to 404 Media, disgruntled Amazon employees have been mocking the company's AI use in a Slack channel that's dubbed #actual-aws-memes.
Calling out Amazon's AI tools for producing 'slop', the channel has become inundated with memes. One depicts the logo for Amazon's AI-powered coding tool known as Kiro, placed over a jet taking off and accompanied by a caption stating, "Now I have everything I need."
The next image shows passengers left on the runway and adds, "Narrator: He did not have everything he needed."
To ensure the anonymity of sources, 404 Media has recreated the memes instead of posting the OG screenshots.
Another says, "Kiro: ‘Confirmed I have the full picture'," while showing the tip of an iceberg and a much bigger mass hiding underwater.
The idea of 'Sloppenheimer' comes from a meme of Cillian Murphy's lead from 2023's Oppenheimer, mocking AI coding tools like Amazon's Kiro, Anthropic’s Claude Code, and one called Meshclaw. Apparently, Amazon employees have been pushed to use all of these at some point.
The posting of these memes is said to have started around the end of 2024, a time "when [AI] adoption started to get really forced by leadership."
One anonymous employee explained: "I think people meme about anything they're around a lot, and obviously AI is a common topic. Of course it doesn't help that leadership is definitely pushing AI so there's probably some element of backlash."
More recent memes are focused on the recent shutdown of an internal leaderboard that tracked how often Amazon employees were using Kiro.
Responding to 404 Media, Amazon maintained that the leaderboard has achieved its goal of motivating staff to use these AI tools. Employees disputed this and claimed the leaderboard was shuttered because some staff were cheating by simply tasking Kiro to complete unnecessary tasks.
One final meme mocked Amazon AI products like Ask Rufus, Amazon Q, and Amazon Nova, asking: "What do you mean by ‘value?’ AI itself is the purpose for everything, no?"
Amazon is adamant that this is just a small representation of the larger workforce's thoughts on AI, concluding: "We’re always looking to understand our teams’ experiences with various tools – that’s how we learn what works for them and what doesn’t – and while this handful of comments doesn't reflect what we hear from most Kiro users, we still appreciate the chance to learn from the feedback."
The tech giant reiterated that it's seeing improvements in Kiro efficiency and delivery, defending it as having "a fundamentally different approach to AI-assisted development that prioritizes production readiness and correctness."
