Amazon founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos said artificial intelligence is more likely to create labor shortages than replace human workers, speaking at the VivaTech technology conference in Paris on Wednesday. Bezos also spoke about other projects including his space venture Blue Origin and his new AI startup Prometheus, providing an optimistic view.
“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 labor shortage.”
This comes amid rising concerns about the influence of AI on the workforce. Several companies have cited AI-based restructuring while conducting layoffs. Amazon is one of them with the company trimming around 30,000 corporate roles since late last year, partly due to AI efficiency gains.
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Current Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had previously said increasing automation through AI tools would result in corporate job losses.
One goal of space exploration is to move polluting industries off Earth, said Bezos whose space venture Blue Origin aims to compete with trillionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX in rockets. “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.
Musk had also recently announced lofty plans for space ahead of his SpaceX IPO, including plans to create cities on the moon and Mars. In an interview with JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon last week, he talked about firing AI data centers into space and having vacations on the moon.
Blue Origin CEO David Limp, who appeared with Bezos, said reconstruction of the firm’s launch pad for New Glenn rockets has begun in Florida following a dramatic explosion in May.
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Recently, Prometheus raised $12 billion in a Series B round from investors including JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, BlackRock and Bezos himself. The startup previously raised $6.2 billion when it launched in late 2025, bringing total funding to more than $18 billion.
The company aims to build what its founders call an “artificial general engineer” AI capable of helping design and manufacture complex physical products. Bezos said the goal is to create tools that dramatically accelerate invention and product development.
Bezos’s recent comments on matters like taxes, philanthropy, and more have been the cause of much discussion of late, as billionaires face increasing scrutiny amid rising wealth inequality.