Jeff Bezos Tells VivaTech AI Will Create Labor Shortage, Not Redundancy

Jeff Bezos told attendees at the VivaTech technology conference in Paris on Wednesday that artificial intelligence will create a labor shortage rather than make humans redundant. “I know there’s a lot of concern that many people have, including many smart people, that AI is going to make humans redundant,” Bezos said in conversation with Blue Origin CEO David Limp.

” Bezos said humans already have “endless” things they want to do and are held back only by barriers that AI will lower.

He made similar arguments in a May interview with CNBC, using a “bulldozer vs. shovel” metaphor and predicting deflation driven by productivity gains. Bezos used the VivaTech appearance to discuss Prometheus, the AI startup he co-founded in November 2025 with former Google X scientist Vik Bajaj.

The company has raised $12 billion at a valuation of roughly $41 billion and operates at the intersection of artificial intelligence and the physical economy, targeting engineering and manufacturing sectors including aerospace, automotive, and drug development.

Bezos described Prometheus as building an “artificial general engineer”—a design tool that can model, predict, and optimize creation of physical objects such as jet engines and pharmaceuticals. He also outlined a long-term vision for space exploration, saying reliable and inexpensive space travel would allow materials to be sourced from asteroids, the moon, and near-Earth objects.

That shift, he said, would return Earth to a pre-Industrial Revolution state. McKinsey has predicted a 30% shortfall of magnetic rare earth minerals by 2035. On the same stage, Blue Origin CEO David Limp gave the first public update on the company’s recovery from a May explosion at its New Glenn launch pad in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

No injuries were reported in the incident. Reconstruction of the pad has begun, Limp said, and the company expects launches to resume before the end of 2026.