Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder and billionaire entrepreneur, has predicted that artificial intelligence will create a labour shortage rather than make humans redundant, pushing back against widespread fears that the technology will replace workers.
Speaking at the VivaTech conference in Paris, Bezos dismissed concerns that AI will lead to mass unemployment. “I know there's a lot of concern that many people have, including many smart people, that AI is going to make humans redundant and so on,” he said. “I totally disagree with this point of view. And I think, in fact, AI is going to create a labour shortage.”
“Jeff Bezos says AI will create a labour shortage, not replace humans, at VivaTech Paris.”
His optimistic vision stands in contrast to warnings from other figures, including former UK prime minister Rishi Sunak, now an adviser to Microsoft and AI firm Anthropic, who recently said AI was affecting young people's job prospects. The UK's Trades Union Congress has also cautioned that AI could repeat “the disaster of deindustrialisation” as shareholders gain while jobs are “degraded or displaced”, though it acknowledged that if properly developed, the technology could have transformative potential and workers could benefit from productivity gains.
Bezos, who now runs robotics and space travel companies, was promoting his new AI venture Prometheus, which focuses on accelerating physical manufacturing – a sector becoming increasingly automated. He argued that people are limited not by ambition but by barriers that technology can help remove, suggesting AI will unlock new opportunities and increase demand for human labour.
The discussion also turned to his space ambitions. Bezos described space as “supply constrained, not demand constrained”, with access remaining the biggest obstacle. “We're going to the Moon to stay, not just to visit,” he said, adding that technologies like electrolysis could allow lunar resources to refuel rockets and support a permanent presence beyond Earth.
On Blue Origin, his space travel company, Bezos addressed a recent setback: an uncrewed New Glenn rocket exploded during a ground test at Cape Canaveral, Florida, in May. “It was a gut punch for the whole team. But what we've learned since then is we got really lucky,” he said. No injuries were reported, and critical launch infrastructure – including propellant and fuel systems – survived, which would have taken much longer to replace.