Amazon (AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos has a new metaphor for the artificial intelligence revolution: a bulldozer handed to a worker who’s been digging a basement with a shovel. Speaking in a wide-ranging interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on May 20, 2026, Bezos argued that the most common fear about AI—that it will eliminate entire professions—misses the point. “It’s like […] you’ve been digging out a basement for your house with a shovel,” Bezos said. “And somebody is about to hand you a bulldozer. You should be so happy.”

The comments arrive at a symbolic moment for Amazon itself. On June 30, the company quietly posted a notice on its Mechanical Turk (MTurk) website stating that the 21-year-old crowdsourcing platform “will be closed to new customers, effective July 30, 2026.” Amazon Web Services added in a separate developer-guide announcement for its SageMaker AI platform that while it “continues to invest in security and availability improvements for Mechanical Turk,” it does “not plan to introduce new features.” The dual developments paint a vivid picture of the transition Bezos describes: the original “artificial artificial intelligence” is being eclipsed by the real thing.

The Bulldozer, Not the Replacement

Bezos told CNBC that the biggest misconception about AI is the assumption that it will simply replace people. Instead, he sees the technology absorbing repetitive work, freeing humans to focus on higher-level problems and decision-making. He pointed to software engineering and radiology as fields where AI can accelerate parts of the workflow without eliminating the practitioner. “The work is going to be done at a higher level,” he said. “It’s going to be done with a bulldozer instead of a shovel, and that’s going to be a good thing.”

The Amazon founder also addressed the question hanging over Wall Street: whether the current AI spending spree is inflating a bubble. His answer was notably sanguine. “Even if it does turn out to be a bubble, you shouldn’t worry about it because the bubble is driving investment, and a lot of the investment is going to turn out to be very healthy,” Bezos said. He compared the current wave of capital expenditure to earlier technology booms, arguing that periods of heavy investment frequently produce durable breakthroughs even when individual companies fail. “The good ideas will pay for all of the losers.”

The End of the Road for ‘Artificial Artificial Intelligence’

Bezos’s bulldozer analogy gains a layer of irony from the quiet sunsetting of Mechanical Turk. Launched by Amazon in 2005, MTurk was one of the first mainstream platforms to pay gig workers for micro-tasks that algorithms could not yet handle—transcribing audio, identifying objects in satellite images, verifying business details. Bezos famously described the service as “artificial artificial intelligence,” a nod to the 18th-century chess-playing automaton known as the Mechanical Turk, which concealed a human operator inside a cabinet.

That original Turk was a hoax; MTurk was its transparent digital descendant. The platform helped pave the way for later freelance marketplaces such as Fiverr and Upwork. But just as IBM’s Deep Blue eventually outplayed human chess masters, modern AI systems can now perform many of the tasks once posted on MTurk faster and more cheaply than people.

The June 30 notice means new customers will be barred after July 30, 2026, though existing users can continue using the service. Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the platform’s long-term future. The announcement within the SageMaker AI developer guide that no new features are planned suggests the company is managing a gradual wind-down rather than an abrupt shutdown. Academic researchers who once depended on MTurk for surveys have already been abandoning the platform, partly because of the growing presence of AI bots posing as human respondents.

A Bittersweet Transition

Reaction online has been tinged with nostalgia. “Personally, this is a bittersweet ending,” one Reddit user wrote last week, according to a report by 《Gizmodo》. “MTurk helped me get started on online gig work, so I’m grateful for it just for that… It’s like seeing an old friend well past their expiration date finally getting put to rest.”

The juxtaposition of Bezos’s CNBC appearance and Amazon’s MTurk announcement captures the broader shift in the labor market that the billionaire described. The shovel—human-powered micro-tasking—still works. But Amazon is increasingly betting that customers, and workers, will prefer the bulldozer.

Bezos’s broader remarks stretched beyond AI to taxes, economic growth, and productivity. His central thesis remained consistent: economies expand when people can produce more with better tools. The challenge now, for both Amazon and the wider workforce, is ensuring that the operators of those new bulldozers are the same people who once held the shovels.