Jeff Bezos pushed back against growing fears that artificial intelligence will replace human workers, telling a tech conference in Paris that AI will in fact create a labour shortage. Speaking at Europe’s largest tech expo, VivaTech Paris, the Amazon founder said he “totally disagrees” with the view that AI makes humans redundant. “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,” Bezos said. “I totally disagree with this point of view. And I think, in fact, AI is going to create a labour shortage.”
The billionaire entrepreneur painted an optimistic picture of AI’s future role, suggesting that people are limited not by a lack of ambition but by barriers that technology can help remove. His remarks contradict those of other tech and political figures, including former UK prime minister Rishi Sunak, who now advises Microsoft and AI firm Anthropic and recently said AI was affecting young people’s job prospects. The UK’s Trades Union Congress has warned that AI could repeat “the disaster of deindustrialisation” as shareholders get richer while jobs are “degraded or displaced”. However, it added that AI could have transformative potential if developed properly.
“Jeff Bezos told VivaTech Paris that AI will create a labour shortage, not replace human workers.”
Bezos was at VivaTech to discuss his new AI venture, Prometheus, which focuses on accelerating physical manufacturing – a sector becoming increasingly automated. But he also outlined his long-term vision for space exploration. Describing space as “supply constrained, not demand constrained”, he argued that access to space remains the biggest obstacle to future development. The Moon, he said, offers a natural starting point for humanity’s expansion beyond Earth because of its proximity and resources. “We’re going to the Moon to stay, not just to visit,” Bezos told the audience, adding that technologies such as electrolysis could eventually allow lunar resources to be used to refuel rockets and support a permanent presence beyond Earth.
The discussion also turned to another Bezos venture, space travel company Blue Origin. It had a recent setback after an uncrewed New Glenn rocket exploded during a ground test at Cape Canaveral in Florida in May. “It was a gut punch for the whole team. But what we’ve learned since then is we got really lucky,” Bezos said. No injuries were reported in the explosion, and Bezos noted several critical pieces of launch infrastructure survived the incident, including propellant and fuel systems that would have taken significantly longer to replace.