Thank You, Next
When watching cyberpunk movies or reading cyberpunk stories, one thing is always very similar. Technology has advanced that jobs change, new jobs get created, and others get taken.
In the 1982 movie Blade Runner, we see the manufacturing of replicants, artificial humans who are just created for labor from a company called Tyrell. They are used for jobs that are considered dangerous, exhausting or morally questionable so in other words, those that no one else wants to do.
But since these replicants aren’t actually human, they get treated like products, no matter if they feel like a human. They serve, obey and then die when they are no longer useful, with a build in expiration date and no rights.
But this is all only fiction right?
Human Replacements at Amazon
In the last couple of years more and more information has come out about the working conditions that Amazon warehouse workers have to work under. Automated systems track worker productivity, expecting them to pack more than one hundred boxes an hour. If these expectations aren’t met it can lead to warnings or a direct termination without a human supervisor reviewing the situation. This has lead to roughly 300 people being fired in the proximity of one year. 
In addition to this an open letter has ben signed by 1000 Amazon employees that have warned about unethical use of AI. It is being used for mass layoffs and is planned to lay off 14,000 employees to do its initiatives. But the ironic thing is, the workers themselves are even saying AI is not ready to do so and even acts sloppy and inconsistent in its duties making work harder for those workers who are still human.
This is why they are signing the letter to demand ethical AI working groups that help when and how to use AI efficiently.
Amazon in Neon Lights
Just like Tyrell Amazon has a tendency to see its employees as products and not human beings seen through the way that they just fire people as they please, regarding inhuman efficiency and expectations. The workers are being monitored, controlled, and “eliminated” when not useful anymore, just like in Blade Runner with the only difference that they get fired and not actually eliminated.
It is algorithms that deviate on who works and who gets fired and the corporation gains power over human lives in a way that governments didn’t intend them to and that is exactly the kind of dehumanising corporate control that cyberpunk warns about and shows through Tyrell.
The expectations of packing hundreds of boxes per hour and being terminated when failed also shows this blur between human and machine that Amazon does the same way as Tyrell does. Humans must perform at machine speed and their value is measured on output only, making their bodies pushed to the breaking point. Tyrell creates replicants for labour only which is why they definitly only measure them in output and push their body to the breaking point to use them as much as they can before they have to get another one. The replicants are expected to do inhuman tasks just like the Amazon workers and are discarded when they fail, also just like the Amazon workers.
Corporations demand machine like performance from humans showing how society shifts to a cyberpunk model where labour is dehumanised and expendable.
When it comes to the use of AI we see how it is slowly replacing humans in labour as well to increase profit, truant accountability, and centralise power. Amazon employers are thus fearing that AI is becoming a corporate weapons and not just a tool for human benefit.
With the Tyrell corporation we can similarities in their way of using genetic engineering to create a labor force that it controls. Both show a world where technology amplifies corporate dominance.
Futuristic or Realistic?
Amazon is just one such corporation that shows us that we are moving toward a cyberpunk world because corporation like Amazon increasingly use automation and AI to control workers, replace human judgements, and consolidate power. These practices mirror fictional corporations like Tyrell from Blae Runner in their dehumanisation of labour and willingness to let technology override ethics.
Work Cited
AITechTrend. (2025, November 27). AITechTrend. https://aitechtrend.com/amazon-workers-warn-of-ai-rollouts-ethical-risks/Jee, C. (2019, April 26).
Amazon’s system for tracking its warehouse workers can automatically fire them. MIT Technology Review. https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/04/26/1021/amazons-system-for-tracking-its-warehouse-workers-can-automatically-fire-them/