Automation isn’t only transforming physical labor jobs at Amazon’s warehouses, it’s replacing white collar employees whose jobs are to predict shopper wants and prices. Amazon has fine-tuned algorithms based on years of customer monitoring to be able to more accurately predict inventory needs via software rather than via employees, who may order too much or too little. The algorithms can forecast demand, order inventory and negotiate prices. Initially, humans could override the machine’s decisions if increased demand was something the algorithm didn’t expect. But as the software became more precise, any overrides by humans had to be justified. The initiative came about several years ago as Amazon realized that too many “expensive employees” were spending a lot of time on areas that should have been automated.
See "Amazon began automating warehouses a while ago. Now its machines get desk jobs too", Spencer Soper, The Los Angeles Times, June 13, 2018