Elon Musk has weighed in on reviews Amazon is addressing current outages, together with one associated to AI-assisted coding.
Earlier this month, Amazon’s web site and purchasing app have been down for some customers, with greater than 22,000 customers reporting a problem, in line with outage tracker Downdetector. Prospects have been unable to take a look at, view costs for items, or entry their account data. On the time, Amazon stated the outage was a results of “a software code deployment.”
The report of the assembly drew the eye of tech consultants, together with Musk, who made his feedback public when he responded to a publish from Lukasz Olejnik, a cybersecurity advisor and visiting senior analysis fellow at Division of Conflict Research, King’s Faculty London.
“Amazon is holding a mandatory meeting about AI breaking its systems,” Olejnik wrote.
“Proceed with caution,” Musk replied.
An Amazon spokesperson advised Fortune that the TWiST assembly is a daily weekly operations assembly with a bunch of retail expertise groups and leaders to evaluate operational efficiency.
“As part of normal business, the meeting will include a review of the availability of our website and app as we focus on continual improvement,” the spokesperson stated in an announcement.
The corporate confirmed Amazon Net Providers (AWS) was not concerned within the incidents. Amazon stated just one incident mentioned was associated to AI, however none concerned AI-written code. Junior and mid-level engineers are additionally not required to have senior engineers log out on AI-assisted modifications, in line with the corporate.
The dangers of speedy AI deployment
The outages and subsequent assembly has raised issues from cybersecurity consultants about dangers related to the speedy rollout of AI instruments. Options like Amazon’s AI assistant Q can velocity up the coding course of, producing extra code sooner, however it could come on the danger of disrupting techniques for the way that code is written, checked, and deployed, making platforms extra vulnerable to outages, Olejnik advised Fortune.
“I’m not making an argument against deployment of AI,” he stated. “There isn’t any. It can’t be stopped. Everybody is going to deploy AI. It’s an argument against speed for its own sake or using AI for the sake of using AI.”
Late final yr, Amazon started the method of shedding hundreds of employees, citing wishes to change into extra environment friendly and align the corporate culturally. These layoffs have continued into this yr, with the corporate lowering employees by an extra 16,000 in January. In the meantime, Amazon has continued pouring cash into AI, projecting $200 billion in capex in 2026, a rise from $131 billion in 2025.
Musk, for his half, has beforehand stated AI will bypass coding fully by the top of 2026.
Olejnik warned the transition from human-centered coding to AI-run techniques too rapidly may end in lacking security checks leading to extended downtime or knowledge loss that would end in “blowing up” a enterprise attributable to irresponsible AI deployment.
When requested, he stated he noticed eye-to-eye with Musk concerning the extent of consideration AI deployment in tech ought to require.
“I agree with him,” Olejnik stated. “AI brings a lot of opportunities, but there’s a middle ground between going to obsolescence due to not using AI, and blowing up businesses due to ill-judged deployments.”
