Jeff Bezos reveals why he thinks AI will cause a labor shortage, not mass unemployment "There's so many people who are afraid AI is going to take their job. I think there's going to be a labor shortage as a result" "All these smart people keep saying there's going... to be no more radiologists because AI can read X-rays better, no more software engineers because AI can program better. These people are wrong" "What's really going to happen is it's going to elevate all of these people. You've been digging out a basement with a shovel, and somebody is about to hand you a bulldozer" "We're going to have so much productivity that a lot of people with two-earner income households, one of them is going to drop out of the workforce" "I predict we will actually have deflation of certain core things. Food will get cheaper and housing construction will get cheaper"show more

Oh, I wish increased productivity meant increased income, but it never works out that way: increased productivity translates to increased profits going to the investor/shareholder/owner class, while the workers that increased that productivity get kudos and maybe a small bonus.

This isn't like moving from a shovel to a bulldozer. It's like moving from a shovel to a self driving bulldozer that also replaces the operator. A bulldozer still needs a human directing it. AI increasingly doesn't. That's the part people like Bezos keep glossing over. AI doesn't only make workers more productive. In many cases it removes the need for the worker entirely by replacing the human input itself. If one person with AI does the work of 10 people, the economy doesn't magically create 9 equivalent jobs overnight. And of course Bezos is going to sell the optimistic version. Amazon's entire future depends on replacing labour costs with automation. The people building the systems have every incentive to frame it as a productivity miracle instead of a workforce disruption.

Bezos hits the nail on the head because when you shift from a shovel to a bulldozer, you don’t stop building, you just start building skyscrapers instead of basements. When AI makes a resource like writing code cheaper and faster, the Jevons Paradox kicks in and demand actually skyrockets. The constraint won't be a lack of jobs, but rather finding the talent skilled enough to operate the new machinery.

To me it seems both are true. I think short and mid term it does take jobs and cause mass disruption. Think of graphic designers now, people can do so much with a $20 subscription for logos. Of course it affects them negatively. Longer term is a completely different equation.

This makes zero sense. “AI will do things so much better than humans that we’ll hire more humans?” What a lie.

this statement shows that Jeff Bezos is not a serious person. low level clerks and administrators across many industries will be unnecessary. some jobs will be elevated but the ones near the bottom will not.

Yes, AI will likely increase efficiency. So did automation, computers, robotics, and the internet. The issue isn’t whether productivity rises, it’s whether ordinary workers share in the benefits or whether the gains are concentrated among shareholders, executives, and large tech

Of course, there’s absolutely no evidence that what his predictions will actually happen. Actually, the opposite, so far, is that people are getting laid off from good paying middle class jobs. Where will they go? He doesn’t know. He just needs to have people be optimistic while he prepares to eliminate tens of thousands of jobs.

If we start digging basements with bull dozers, we're screwed. Someone coach this guy on his analogies.... Excavator.

Liars Lie. The fact is that AI will allow people living in 3rd world countries to do jobs in 1st world countries without actually living there or needing a Visa.

You probably need 10 guys with shovels dig out the basement of your house. You only need one guy with a bulldozer. What a dumb fucking analogy

I don't know what's true at this point. Elon Musk says we need universal basic income, while Jeff Bezos says we'll still have a lot of jobs. But what I think is that someday we'll reach a point where it's no longer required to have a job. If that happens, we'll become more dependent on the government, giving those in power more control. It will be like going back to the dark ages, right? The same system where people pass down power through bloodlines, and those without connections will have no chance of upward mobility because there will be no other opportunities. Why were software engineers paid so much? Because of scarcity. Pay increases only occur when supply cannot meet demand that's the core issue. After AI, there will be no such thing as very difficult tasks. Everything AI can do wonderfully, perhaps even better. I think we'll see a "wolf pack" concept emerge a small, tight-knit group of people who work together to solve difficult problems. I believe they can monetize their work, and this might be a viable approach. But AI can't solve novel problems because it doesn't recognize problems that don't yet exist. AI is about prediction it can't generate new thoughts out of nowhere. While it might combine existing ideas to create something new, it can't perform genuine invention or discovery. So in those areas, humans will still be needed.

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Bezos: "What's really going to happen is it's going to elevate all of these people." Elevate or PUMP-UP?

Why is he slowly turning into Joe Rogan? Steroids + Aging

That will happen for a bit until ai completely takes over and people need to focus on him separating Americans into 2 classes. A guy that employees .69% (1 person employees nearly an entire percent of Americans) says ai will take jobs; he’s already getting rid of employees.

Let's trust the opinion of a guy who's automating jobs away I'm sure he has my best interest at heart

Based on Bezos’ logic, we should already be seeing deflation. Productivity has risen for decades, yet prices keep climbing. Inflation is driven by the Fed and corporate greed. Meanwhile, Amazon laid off 16,000 workers in Q1 while reporting $30.3B in profit.

Jeff Bezon is a visionary, so we can’t just take lightly or dismiss what he is saying. Having said and I know it is still early, but so far it has been exactly the opposite with all these daily thousand of layoffs.

He’s a fucking asshat. He knows fine well companies are looking to do more with less because of AI, sick of hearing about FTE saves. What kind of fake moral planet is he trying to sell. Total dick.

Smart people calling for these jobs to disappear have a narrow read on what intelligence is. Humans go zero to one, AI doesnt

That shovel vs. dozer analogy, it would take over 5000 men, with shovels and wheelbarrels, to match the work one person on a Cat D 11 dozer. And Soon, maybe even now, that dozer doesn’t need an operator.

Millennials and Gen Z can't wait for housing to get cheaper. Poetic justice when boomers realize nobody wants to buy their old homes.

This requires the wealthy to pay people more for being more productive, which historically they don't do unless something forces them.

@TheConquerMM Absokute lies - I share the same industry as him. I’m at a VP level he’s talking absolute bullshit. Sure he’s talking on a grander scale, but this is all propaganda from here.

More proof that the 1% get there by the lottery effect, wherein somebody has to come out on top regardless, and smarts are really irrelevant. Success in business doesn't prove competence. It just proves the basics of capitalism that there are necessarily winners, and losers.

Sadly, it's clear that one thing the government will never allow is deflation. Any time there's a hint of that, the Fed prints up money so that Congress and the banks can benefit while the rest of us pay in prices that are higher than they would otherwise be. So they convince you that prices going down is somehow bad.

He's lying, bc the access to AI is not equal for the rich and the poor. Rich have AI as a slave, and poor will be the slaves to AI. So, yeah, production may become cheaper, but it'll lead only to more billions for Bezos and others like him.

Listen to his bullshit if you want to, they are trying to stay alive long enough to get surveillance in place. Long as the pacify the masses with hope, they can exist. The minute hooe is gone, this shit gets burned to the ground

He’s a much better marketer than the idiot CEO’s saying humans are obsolete

Bezos is lying and he knows it..

Jeff is 100% correct. 👍 Golden age coming.

Bezos is really underrated as a thinker

AMAZON'S JEFF BEZOS SHARES HIS AI THOUGHTS: AI will cause a labor shortage, not mass unemployment "I predict we will actually have deflation of certain core things. Food will get cheaper and housing construction will get cheaper"