As artificial intelligence researchers, engineers, and ethicists increasingly walk away and sound alarms, billionaire Jeff Bezos has emerged with a contrarian view, urging the public to stop fearing the technology.
Speaking to Fox News, the Amazon founder and Prometheus co-CEO argued that, rather than sparking widespread unemployment, rapid advances in AI could deliver double-digit economic productivity gains that fundamentally reduce how much humans need to work.
"Some people will also decide, you know what, I can support my family by working three days a week," Bezos told Baier.
The world's second-richest person—whose net worth is pegged by Forbes at approximately $378.6 billion—suggested that AI-driven efficiency could restore single-income viability for two-earner households, eliminating the need for workers to juggle multiple jobs just to stay afloat. Consequently, Bezos predicted that companies could soon grapple with labour shortages rather than job gluts, as workers actively opt for shorter hours and fewer shifts.
Addressing mounting public and industry anxiety surrounding automation, Bezos explicitly pushed back against prevailing gloom. "A lot of smart people are prognosticating" AI-induced job devastation, Bezos remarked, adding, "I just happen to disagree with those smart people."
When challenged by Baier on Amazon’s own corporate downsizing—having eliminated roughly 30,000 corporate positions over the past year—Bezos defended the company's trajectory, calling it a "very special position" resulting from aggressive, rapid headcount expansion during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Beyond Amazon, Bezos has deepened his direct bets on machine intelligence through Prometheus, an AI enterprise he co-founded to develop what he terms an "artificial general engineer" designed to translate concepts into physical hardware and manufacturing solutions.
Source link







