At Italian Tech Week in Turin, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos described artificial intelligence as being in the middle of an “industrial bubble,” but stressed that the underlying technology is “real” and will ultimately bring profound benefits to society — including reshaping the global workforce.
Bezos compared today’s AI boom to historic speculative frenzies, noting that bubbles form when stock prices become “disconnected from the fundamentals” of a business, according to CNBC.
“The second thing that happens is that people get very excited like they are today about artificial intelligence,” Bezos said. During such periods, he explained, both “the good ideas and the bad ideas” attract funding, making it difficult for investors to separate long-term winners from failures.
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He gave the example of a six-person startup receiving billions of dollars in funding, calling it “very unusual behavior,” while hinting that such activity illustrates the overheated nature of the current AI race.
Yet unlike financial bubbles that destroy wealth when they burst, Bezos argued that “industrial bubbles” often leave behind enduring breakthroughs. He cited the biotech and pharmaceutical boom of the 1990s, which, despite wiping out many companies, produced life-saving drugs.
“When the dust settles and you see who are the winners, societies benefit from those inventions. That is what is going to happen here too,” he said. “AI is real, and it is going to change every industry.”
Bezos’s remarks came in response to a question from Exor CEO John Elkann about whether today’s AI surge shows signs of overheating. His view aligns with warnings from other global business leaders that the AI trade is at risk of becoming a classic speculative mania.
In August, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman reportedly described the AI market as a bubble. Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon also weighed in at the Turin event, warning that hype-fueled optimism often leads investors to “diminish the things you should be skeptical about that can go wrong.” He added: “There will be a reset, there will be a check at some point, there will be a drawdown. The extent of that will depend on how long this [bull run] goes.”
Karim Moussalem, chief investment officer of equities at Selwood Asset Management, recently compared today’s frenzy to “one of the great speculative manias of market history.”
The debate reflects a growing split among technologists and financiers: while many acknowledge the risks of runaway valuations, few doubt the transformative potential of AI. In fact, the current moment echoes the late 1990s dotcom boom. Then, as now, vast sums of money poured into untested startups. The dotcom crash in 2000 wiped out trillions in market value, but it also paved the way for long-lasting giants like Amazon, Google, and eBay. By drawing parallels to that period, Bezos suggested that even if today’s AI bubble bursts, the long-term outcome could be the same — a handful of resilient companies emerging to define the future of global technology.
But beyond valuations, AI’s disruptive power is increasingly being discussed in terms of jobs. Industry leaders, economists, and think tanks warn that the very industries Bezos said AI will transform could also face waves of displacement. Goldman Sachs, for instance, has estimated that as many as 300 million full-time jobs globally could be affected, with roles in administration, customer support, and clerical work among the most vulnerable.
Tech executives have echoed those concerns. Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has repeatedly warned that AI could make most human jobs obsolete in the long term, with society needing to prepare for models such as a universal basic income. IBM’s CEO Arvind Krishna has already announced plans to slow or freeze hiring in roles that could be replaced by AI, particularly in back-office functions.
At the same time, other experts argue that AI could generate entirely new types of employment. The World Economic Forum has predicted that while 83 million jobs could be displaced by 2027, around 69 million new ones may emerge in fields like data science, AI governance, robotics, and digital education.
This duality — a looming wave of job displacement alongside the creation of new roles — mirrors the paradox of previous industrial revolutions. As the steam engine, electricity, and the internet disrupted old systems, they simultaneously opened new frontiers for work. Bezos’s assertion that “AI is real, and it is going to change every industry” fits squarely into this narrative, with both risk and opportunity intertwined.