Brian Dumaine: What Does Jeff Bezos Really Want?
In Conversation with Andrew Keen on the Keen On
The coronavirus pandemic is dramatically disrupting not only our daily lives but society itself. This show features conversations with some of the world’s leading thinkers and writers about the deeper economic, political, and technological consequences of the pandemic. It’s our new daily podcast trying to make longterm sense out of the chaos of today’s global crisis.
On today’s episode, Brian Dumaine, journalist and author of Bezonomics: How Amazon Is Changing Our Lives and What the World’s Best Companies Are Learning from It, discusses what Amazon tells us about the future of labor.
From the episode:
Andrew Keen: What does Amazon really want?
Brian Dumaine: Well, that’s a tough one, but I came to the conclusion that Jeff Bezos wants to run the smartest company in the world. And by smart, he means integrating artificial intelligence and big data machine learning into the operations of Amazon. One of the most fascinating things about the company is tat Google, Facebook, and Microsoft are all very good at machine-learning, but Amazon is ahead in terms of integrating this into the physical world. With Alexa, you can operate your television set. You can stream music. You can run your home security system. You can talk to it in your car to order a cup of Starbucks on your way to work. … He wants to create the smartest company in the world, so smart that we want to use Amazon and anywhere where our lives touch the Internet.
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Brian Dumaine is an award-winning journalist and a contributing editor at Fortune magazine. In addition to Bezonomics his works include The Plot to Save the Planet, and, with three coauthors, Go Long: Why Long-Term Thinking Is Your Best Short-Term Strategy. He and his wife live in New York.
