Amazon chief executive Andy Jassy on Thursday justified the company’s billions of dollars in outlays for artificial intelligence development, saying the investment was necessary to remain competitive. “If your mission is to make customers’ lives better and easier every day, and you believe every customer experience will be reinvented by AI, you’re going to invest deeply and broadly in AI,” wrote Jassy in his letter to shareholders, an annual rite of passage for the top boss at the Seattle retailer. He said substantial capital investment is necessary to obtain AI chips and build datacenters.