Amazon, Microsoft, and the new realities of AI at work
GeekWire
GeekWire
4.4 • 116 Ratings
🗓️ 21 June 2025
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we discuss how AI is transforming our local tech giants, changing the fundamental nature of work, and blurring the lines between human and machine.
We dive into the memo that has Amazon employees either signing up for AI training or updating their resumes; unpack why you're answering emails at 10 p.m.; and explain how one of us ended up quizzing his dentist's office assistant (or was it an AI chatbot?) about whether he or she (or it?) was human. Then we ask the new Alexa+ what it (she?) thinks about the exchange.
Related stories
- Andy Jassy’s long game: Amazon’s reinvention enters its 5th phase as AI upends the workforce
- Amazon CEO: AI will shrink corporate workforce in coming years
- The ‘infinite workday’ is here — and Microsoft says AI will make it worse if we’re not careful
With GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I do have access to the new Alexa Plus, the new Alexa, and I've given Alexa some personal information of yours that you gave to me. |
| 0:10.9 | That you gave to me. |
| 0:12.3 | So later on, we'll be interacting with that later on. |
| 0:15.8 | And it's health data too. |
| 0:17.2 | So it's like perfect. |
| 0:18.9 | Perfect. Hi and welcome to Geekwire. |
| 0:28.6 | I'm Geekwire co-founder Todd Bishop. |
| 0:30.6 | And I'm Geekwire co-founder John Cook. |
| 0:31.6 | We are coming to you from Seattle, where we get to report each day on what's happening around us in business, technology, and |
| 0:37.6 | innovation. What happens here matters everywhere and every week on this show. We get to talk about |
| 0:42.4 | some of the most interesting and important stories and trends in the news. Coming up later on, |
| 0:47.3 | John, I want to talk about the infinite workday. Microsoft came out with it. I feel like I'm |
| 0:53.6 | constantly in it. We'll talk about that later on. |
| 0:56.4 | And fittingly, I did write the story at 10 p.m. at night for a midnight embargo. So I almost |
| 1:01.7 | put that at the top of the story, but I decided not to. But first, you know, a couple weeks ago, |
| 1:06.5 | we had our 15th anniversary geekwire podcast, and one of the things that we talked about |
| 1:11.9 | on that was this big meta trend that we've tracked, where you had in the beginning, back |
| 1:19.0 | in the 2011 timeframe, many of these companies, Amazon and Microsoft specifically, really |
| 1:25.0 | judging their success, or at least their contribution to the region and to the |
| 1:28.7 | economy by the size of their workforce. |
| 1:31.7 | And we noted back then as part of that anniversary show that we were starting to see the end of that. |
| 1:37.3 | And we really saw the end of it, I think, this week with a memo that Andy Jassy, Amazon CEO, |
... |
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