Amazon's Robot Takeover

Video Description

Over the past two decades, no company has done more to shape the American workplace than Amazon. In its ascent to become the nation’s second-largest employer, it has developed an aggressive corporate culture and pioneered using technology to hire, monitor and manage workers. Now, interviews and a cache of internal strategy documents reveal that Amazon executives believe their company is on the cusp of their next big workplace shift: replacing more than half a million jobs with robots. Karen Weise takes us inside Amazon’s push toward automation and the implications for the company and potentially for the broader economy. Guest: Karen Weise (https://www.nytimes.com/by/karen-weise) , (https://www.nytimes.com/by/keith-bradsher) a technology correspondent for The New York Times, based in Seattle. Background reading:  • Amazon plans to replace more than half a million jobs with robots (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/21/technology/inside-amazons-plans-to-replace-workers-with-robots.html) . • Meet Sparrow, Cardinal and Proteus, the robots powering Amazon’s automation. (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/21/technology/amazon-robotics-automation.html) Photo: Emily Kask for The New York Times For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily (http://nytimes.com/thedaily?smid=pc-thedaily) . Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.  Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts (http://nytimes.com/podcasts) or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.