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‘AI is going to cause massive labour shortage’, says Groq CEO Jonathan Ross

Groq CEO Jonathan Ross says AI will create labour shortages, cut costs, and cause people to work fewer hours in the future.

4 min readNew DelhiUpdated: Jan 21, 2026 09:06 AM IST

AI adoption has increased rapidly in the last two years. (Image Source: Freepik)

As fears of AI-driven job losses continue to grow, Groq CEO Jonathan Ross says the technology won’t cause job shortages but instead “will create a labour shortage.” In a video shared on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), the Groq CEO says he believes “that AI is gonna cause massive labour shortages. I don’t think we’re gonna have enough people to fill the jobs that are gonna be created”

Ross goes on to say that the technology would cause a “massive deflationary pressure”, hinting that AI would dramatically reduce the price of almost everything.

“This cup of coffee is gonna cost less. Your housing is gonna cost less. Everything is gonna cost less, which means people are gonna need less money because you are gonna have robots that are going to be farming the coffee more efficiently, you’re going to have better supply chain management.”

The Groq CEO explains that people will eventually need to work less than they do now and require less money to maintain their standard of living. Ross’s second prediction is that, due to AI, people will “opt out of the economy more.” He predicts that people in the future will work fewer hours every day and may retire earlier because they will have to work less to support their lifestyle.

Also Read | AI job anxiety is highest among young workers, Randstad survey reveals

Jonathan Ross, Founder and CEO of AI chip company Groq, offers a contrarian view: AI won’t destroy jobs, it will create a labour shortage.

He outlines three things that will happen because of AI:

First, massive deflationary pressure.

“This cup of coffee is going to cost less.… pic.twitter.com/pUk20fID1B

— Big Brain AI (@realBigBrainAI) January 18, 2026

Lastly, he believes AI will create new jobs and industries. “Think about 100 years ago, 98% workforce in the United States was in agriculture. When we were able to reduce that to 2%, we found things for those other 98% of the population to do, ” Ross says, pointing at history as evidence.

“The jobs that are going to exist 100 years from now, we can’t even contemplate,” he adds. Taking software developers as an example, Ross says the job didn’t exist a century ago and that, in the next 100 years, the role will vanish “because everyone’s going to be vibe coding.”

To give you a quick recap, “vibe coding ” allows non-technical workers, who are unfamiliar with coding languages like C++, Python and JavaScriptto build real projects in their free time using natural language prompts.

Since generative AI’s popularity, several tech companies have encouraged workers to embrace “vibe coding” to speed up software development and quickly ship updates and new features. Last year, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that almost 30 per cent of the company’s code was written by AI, with Google CEO Sundar Pichai claiming that AI contributed to more than 25% of new code.

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In December last year, NVIDIA, the first company to hit a $5 trillion valuation, agreed to pay $20 billion for Groq to license its AI inference hardware. The Jensen-Huang-led graphic and AI chip maker also recruited several employees, including CEO Jonathan Ross. NVIDIA’s Groq deal comes in the midst of a narrative that the company has a sort of monopoly over the AI chip market. But despite C-suite leaders looking to increase their AI investments this year, a study suggests that there is a shortage of skilled talent in the industry.

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