Jeff Bezos Insists AI Will Actually Create A 'Labor Shortage'

Lydia O'ConnorThu, June 18, 2026 at 12:04 AM UTC

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Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, one of the richest men on Earth, pooh-poohed concerns that artificial intelligence technologies will result in people losing their jobs -- even though that appears to be underway at his own company.

"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 at a technology conference in Paris.

"I totally disagree with this point of view. And I think, in fact, AI is going to create a labor shortage," he said. AI will help people "identify more problems" to solve.

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This claim runs contrary to the views of many top economists and the fears of the American public.

Amazon has laid off tens of thousands of workers over the past year as the company competes for dominance in the AI space. Last June, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said that in the next few years, he expects the company's AI implementations "will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company," though it's "hard to know exactly where this nets out over time" as people shift to different types of work.

Also in the news: Aisha Wahab Advances In California Special Election To Replace Swalwell

It's not just Amazon. Of the nearly 100,000 people laid off in May, American employers cited AI as the main reason for nearly 40,000 of those cuts, a report from the firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas found.

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