🛒 Jeff Bezos' greatest fear comes true

Happy Saturday Anon! Today we're discussing Jeff Bezos' greatest fear coming true and how your dead family might soon be reading to you. Estimated read time: 1.8 minutes.

Jeff Bezos' greatest fear when he ran Amazon wasn't that Amazon would be usurped by a competitor like Shopify; it was that the company would lose its Day 1 mentality; the company's secret sauce. Context: Day 1 is a mentality at Amazon that emphasizes "long-term focus, obsessing over customers, bold innovation [and a lack of bureaucracy]". Many insiders at the company are claiming that this mentality is being lost in the ad department due to a massive bureaucracy enveloping the company in the aftermath of Covid.  What I'm hearing: The vetting for a job description has 20 rounds of revisions with “human resources managers and staffers sending the documents back and forth over the course of weeks.” Holy crap Batman, that's DMV tier bureaucracy!  

Why it matters: Once Amazon loses its Day 1 mentality, Bezos predicted that Amazon would experience "stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death." This is known as Day 2 and you DO NOT want to own a Day 2 company over the long term; just look at General Electric. The bottom line: Day 2 is what kills a company and if Amazon is experiencing Day 2 it might be time to start worrying about the future of Amazon. Andrew Jassy (Amazon's current CEO) has work to do.

 Go deeper: Amazon’s Ad Staffers Flee Amid Complaints of Bloat, Bureaucracy

Bonus: Your dead family reads to you

Amazon has unveiled an experimental Alexa feature that allows a dead relative to read to you just by using a small sound byte. Driving the news: Hey Alexa, wtf! Users responded with anger on social media at the experimental feature believing that it is "creepy as hell".Why it matters: Tech like this isn't new; it has been used in movies and podcasting - editor Descript uses a feature like this to help correct audio mistakes. It has great applications in creating silly videos, or on the flip side, using these tools to make public officials say things that they haven't said.Have a laugh: 

• Six U.S. Presidents read "Fuck Tha Police" by N.W.A.

• Nelson Mandela reads the "They Targeted Gamers" Copypasta

• Kanye West raps "My B**** Ain't No Hobbit" from South Park

• George W. Bush raps "In da club" by 50 Cent

• Kanye West raps "Gay Fish" from South Park

• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez reads the Navy Seals Copypasta

• JFK reads the "They Targeted Gamers" Copypasta

• FDR performs the Ezekiel 25:17 scene from "Pulp Fiction"

• Donald Trump and AOC cover "A Whole New World" from Aladdin

The bottom line: As AI tools become more user friendly like DALL-E and voice synthesis human creativity can be unleashed beyond belief to create hilarious videos or forge what public officials say to mold public opinion like clay.