Bots felled hundreds of jobs at tech giant
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If time is money, Amazon’s massive internet shutdown Monday cost netizens a pretty penny, as it lasted for a good chunk of Monday. Of course, the story is that artificial intelligence was not implicated in the humongous blooper.
And yet techies are skeptical. After all, Amazon in July laid off hundreds of workers, whose jobs were replaced by AI.
A replacement AI system may not have thought to look for problems that would have been obvious to skilled humans, the doubtful said.
As Futurism comments,
“Amazon has suffered major AWS outages before. But the timing and impact of this one comes just months after an eyebrow-raising personnel decision by the e-commerce giant. In July, its cloud computing unit cut at least hundreds of jobs — and perhaps more — following a warning from CEO Andy Jassy that the adoption of generative AI would lead to layoffs.
”It remains unclear which roles were affected by the layoffs. But if Amazon is relying on AI to pick up the slack in the wake of the AWS layoffs, it could be a stunning example of how efforts to replace human employees with unreliable AI tools and AI agents have backfired.”
The periodical also observes:
”When Amazon Web Services suffered an outage on Monday morning, it practically took down the internet with it. There went all of Amazon’s services, from its shopping hub to its Ring doorbell cameras. ChatGPT went quiet. “Smart” mattresses became unsleepable. Video games like Fortnite blinked out, as did platforms like Snapchat and banking apps.
”An even greater source of alarm was how long it took to fix the outage. Issues related to the crash were first reported at 3:11 am EST. Three hours later, the AWS dashboard said the underlying issue had been “fully mitigated.” But it wouldn’t be until 6:53 pm that Amazon announced that all its services were returned to “normal operations.” Over half a day had passed, causing an estimated billions of dollars in lost productivity.”
Read the entire Futurism story at:
https://futurism.com/
I spoke with the Perplexity.ai bot on the net shutdown. Here is some of Perplexity’s side of that discussion:
AI’s Broader Role in Cloud Reliability
While AI services did not trigger this particular outage, industry analysts have raised concerns that rapid AI expansion is amplifying risks of future disruptions. Bob Venero, CEO of Future Tech Enterprise, stated that as more enterprises introduce AI capabilities into public cloud systems, outages will become more frequent due to the escalating complexity and energy intensity of AI workloads on existing cloud infrastructure. AWS itself has invested heavily in new data centers for AI-specific hardware in 2025, signaling that system load is climbing rapidly.
In summary: the October 2025 AWS outage was caused by a DNS and network control-plane error, not AI activity. However, rising AI-related computational demand may make such incidents harder to contain in the future unless infrastructure resiliency improves.
Prominent AI-Linked Network Failures
DeepSeek AI Chatbot Cyberattack (China, 2025)
The “Chinese ChatGPT” experienced a massive outage after a surge in global users coincided with a targeted cyberattack, forcing temporary shutdown of services. Analysts viewed it as a warning about scaling risks in generative AI systems handling user data under heavy global load.
Warsaw Stock Exchange Halt (Poland, 2025)
High-frequency trading algorithms driven by AI logic caused a feedback loop of sell orders, overwhelming market controls and forcing a one-hour trading suspension across the entire exchange.
CrowdStrike Global Outage (Worldwide, 2024)
A flawed AI-driven cybersecurity update bricked millions of Windows systems globally, interrupting internet services, airline operations, and hospital systems for days. This demonstrated the fragility of automated patching informed by machine-based telemetry.
AI-Driven Power Grid Blackout (Simulated, CSET Report)
The Center for Security and Emerging Technology described a case where machine-learning energy management software automatically spun down major power plants due to misinterpreted data, leading to a blackout scenario—highlighting real systemic risks of autonomous control in infrastructure.
Autonomous Vehicle Network Outages
Incidents such as Cruise (2023) and Waymo (2024) led to suspensions of self-driving fleets after AI perception or communication errors endangered public networks and mobility systems.
Aggregated Databases and Ongoing Tracking
AI Incident Database (incidentdatabase.ai)
A continually updated repository cataloging network, industrial, and governance failures linked to AI-driven automation and decision-making tools.
EWSolutions’ “Rising Tide of Trouble” (2025)
Highlights a trend of increasing AI-caused systemic incidents, predicting more cross-sector disruptions where AI governs mission-critical infrastructure like cloud networking, power distribution, and market systems.
In sum, while AI has not been tied to the October 2025 AWS outage, its track record includes several high-profile AI-linked shutdowns and systemic disruptions, illustrating vulnerabilities when automation governs essential network operations without sufficient human oversight.
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