- Jeff Bezos said AI will reduce some jobs but create more and boost productivity
- Over 50% of Americans fear AI could cause job losses in their families, per Reuters poll
- AI has led to a 35% drop in entry-level job postings, says report by Revelio Labs and WEF
There are increasing concerns across the world around safety and job losses as AI advances rapidly. From the Pope to AI founders themselves, everyone has spoken about it. Now Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who's among the richest people in the world has said: "I know why people are pessimistic. They're pessimistic because a bunch of smart people are telling them to be pessimistic."
The billionaire who's now building a physical AI startup called Prometheus said "those people are wrong." He said the advancement of artificial intelligence will mean that the number of people needed in existing jobs will decrease, but more opportunities will be created and productivity will increase.
Also read: Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos' Bet to Build "Artificial General Engineer"
"This could be very significant productivity in the economy, and that is going to raise the standard of living so that a lot of people who for example today have two earner households, perhaps one of those earners will decide not to be in the job market, and so they'll become a one earner household... when you have that much productivity in the economy, the basket of goods that people can afford on less money goes up," he said.
Bezos's comments come on the backdrop of a recent poll by Reuters that showed that more than 50% of Americans fear that the rise of AI could put them or someone in their family out of work. The survey showed that this fear is spread fairly evenly across respondents by age, gender and education level.
Simmering Anger And Fear
Among the student population too there's been a very vocal pushback towards AI as graduating students have booed tech leaders who have tried to talk about how great a technology AI is at commencement speeches at several campuses. As companies across the globe increasingly rely on AI tools, jobs are shrinking due to AI restructuring. A report published last month by Revelio Labs and the World Economic Forum showed a 35% drop in entry-level job postings. Last year, Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei had said AI could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs and cause unemployment to rise to 10% to 20%.
Amodei, who often speaks on AI's societal impact, has even called for the need to pause or slow down its development. He's increasingly called for stricter regulations and policies. Last year he had said, "On the jobs side of this (AI), I do have a fair amount of concern." However, as Anthropic looks to list on the stock exchanges and go public Amodei has recently tweaked his stance on AI-linked job loss and said it may actually expand the work people do.
Billionaire hedge fund boss Citadel Founder and CEO Ken Griffin recently shared his concerns during a conversation at the Stanford Business School.
"I went home one Friday, actually fairly depressed by this (rapid AI progress) because you could just see how this was going to have such a dramatic impact on society."
Griffin is widely considered one of the most powerful and influential leaders in modern finance. The boss of the most profitable hedge fund in history said the rapid progress AI has made in the last few months has him worried as there are clear signs that AI can execute in days what would take a high-value human months.
"In the last few months, there has been a step change function in the productivity of the AI toolkit. It is profoundly more powerful than it was just nine months ago," he said.
Griffin went on to add that he's witnessing the rapid change play out at his own organisation, adding that these are not just mid-tier white collar jobs where the disruption is taking place.
"Work that we would usually do with people with masters and PhDs in finance over the course of weeks or months, being done by AI agents over the course of hours or days. So these are not mid-tier white-collar jobs. These are like extraordinarily high-skilled jobs being automated by agentic AI," he said. Simply put, Agentic AI is an autonomous form of AI where the system can plan and execute tasks by itself without any human guidance or intervention.
According to executive outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas US based employers cut 97,006 jobs in May, the highest total for that month since 2020, when Covid was at its peak.
Tremors Felt In India
The tremors of this disruption are being felt in India's tech corridors too as global giants radically recalibrate their operations. In April 2026, Oracle reportedly laid off around 12,000 employees in India as part of a strategic pivot toward AI.
Even homegrown tech behemoths are shifting gears. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) reduced its headcount by over 12,000 roles in FY26, signaling a major retreat from the traditional, high-volume IT hiring model that defined the sector for decades.
The industry is now witnessing a rapid transition to an "AI Native" model. Firms like Cognizant, Freshworks, and SuperOps are aggressively redesigning their operations around smaller, leaner teams - proving that whether you side with Bezos's optimism or the market's pessimism, the landscape of work is fundamentally changing.
