Amazon founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos predicted that artificial intelligence would create labor shortages, defying predictions that the technology could 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,” Bezos said Wednesday at an appearance at the VivaTech conference in Paris. “I totally disagree with this point of view. And I think, in fact, AI is going to create a labor shortage.”
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Bezos has argued AI will lead to a shortage of labor by “elevating” productivity, allowing people in two-earner households to drop out of the workforce while still affording daily expenses.
The argument is at odds with warnings about the advent of AI from many economists and from those in the industry itself. Amazon itself has trimmed around 30,000 corporate roles, about 10% of its white-collar workforce, partly due to AI.
In his comments on Wednesday, Bezos touted his other projects, such as space venture Blue Origin and new AI startup Prometheus, which aims to speed up physical manufacturing.
The impact of AI on jobs is not yet clear, but some tech companies have announced layoffs that analysts say may be related. Networking and information technology company Cisco, for example, recently announced it is reducing its global workforce by around 4,000 jobs, representing less than 5% of its total employee base. The company took this approach to shift resources into high-growth areas, specifically AI infrastructure.
The public is increasingly nervous about the effects of AI on the workforce. For instance, half of Americans fear the rise of AI could put them or someone in their household out of work, a Reuters-Ipsos poll found this month.
Washington and Silicon Valley are bracing for AI job losses, with some saying that increased government services or even a universal basic income might be necessary because so many people will lose their jobs.
“If millions of people lose their jobs to AI, we’ll need the funds to deliver universal health care so those workers are not bankrupted by a visit to the doctor,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) wrote in a Time op-ed.
In the meantime, Bezos has a strong focus on space, with one of his goals being to move polluting industries off Earth, he said.
“If space travel gets reliable enough and inexpensive enough, and we can get materials from asteroids and near-Earth objects and the moon, then this garden planet can be returned to its pre-Industrial Revolution state,” Bezos said.
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Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who is leading the charge for a moratorium on data center construction, plans to introduce legislation to create an AI sovereign wealth fund by taking a 50% stake in leading AI companies, an idea he framed as a one-time tax.
“Since A.I. is built on the collective knowledge of humanity, the wealth it generates must benefit humanity,” he wrote in a New York Times op-ed. “Not just [SpaceX CEO Elon] Musk, [OpenAI CEO Sam] Altman, [Anthropic CEO] Dario Amodei, and other moguls whose companies are positioned to dominate the industry.”
