Amazon is spending up to $200 billion this year to build out AI.
Some of its loudest critics now work inside the company. Three of its engineers spoke up against new data centers. Now Amazon is looking into them.
Five Amazon workers spoke at Seattle City Council meetings. The topic was a one-year pause, or moratorium, on building new data centers.
The city passed that pause in a united vote on June 9. At the meetings, the workers slammed the industry's AI spending.
They called it an "all-costs-justified AI build out." Soon after, three of them were pulled into private HR calls.
Those calls were about what they said in public. The workers laid it out in a complaint to the city's civil rights office.
One worker was told the worst case could be losing the job.
The fight is small for now. It is just three workers and one complaint.
But it lands at a tense time for Amazon.
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Amazon says it respects its workers' right to speak. But it says staff cannot pose as company reps without set steps.
That is the line from spokesperson Margaret Callahan. The company says it is only checking if its rules were broken.
It may or may not act on what it finds. It also denies telling anyone they would be fired.
The case is now with the city. Amazon says it did nothing wrong.
The engineers belong to a group called Amazon Employees for Climate Justice. Its founders were fired back in 2020, then settled with the company.
The group has pushed Amazon on climate before. Now it wants the company to slow down on AI.
This is the friction under the AI boom. Amazon is pouring up to $200 billion into AI this year.
At the same time, it has cut 30,000 office jobs since October. That is part of CEO Andy Jassy's plan to run it like the "world's largest startup."
The public is not sold either. A recent Gallup poll found 7 in 10 Americans don't want AI data centers built near them.
Nearly half were strongly against. Only about a quarter were in favor.
Their worries are simple. They point to harm to the environment and to daily life.
The centers use huge amounts of power and water. That is what scares many towns.
The AI trade assumes these data centers get built fast. Local pushback, and now anger inside Amazon, are speed bumps.
They don't show up in a spending forecast. Amazon needs these sites built fast.
The towns nearby keep saying no. The bill for AI is easy to count, but the pushback is harder to model.
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