The future is looking bright, at least according to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Fortune reported on Bezos’ speech at Italian Tech Week 2025, where he shared his vision of the future — one that includes living in space and a lack of commutes.
Included among Bezos’ predictions is the expectation that by 2045, robots will commute to work for us. More significant than that, though, is his prediction that within the next decade or two, millions will be enjoying life in space.
Bezos also shared his disbelief with those who predict the downfall of civilization due to AI and technological advances. AI, however, is already responsible for people losing jobs, and the data centers required to power the technology consume a massive amount of natural resources. Considering these factors, it’s easy to see how people can predict doom and gloom with AI’s continued use.
The potential benefits are obvious, too, by allowing a machine to synthesize huge volumes of data and draw conclusions or recommendations in minutes — in some cases even helping to solve pollution and power problems, even if we have yet to see any such solution compensate for the power usage associated with the many millions of more trivial AI uses per day.
The Amazon founder isn’t the only billionaire who is looking forward to a future in space, either. Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, predicts that in a mere decade, college grads will be working off-planet on exciting (and extremely well-paid) projects, while Elon Musk remains convinced that humans will be living on Mars as soon as 2028.
Not all of the uber-rich are believers in space travel, though. Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, told James Corden that he believes humanity should prioritize fixing our current planet over planning ventures into space.
“Space? We have a lot to do here on Earth,” he said.
According to Fortune, Gates “has been on the fence about how far we should push technology.”
While Gates said in an interview with Jimmy Fallon that AI and machines could begin a new era where people only have to work a couple of days a week while machines do the rest, he also once explained that if he ever came across a time-traveler, he’d question them on the future of humanity under AI.
To Gates’ point, it’s also unclear how any of the tech companies and moguls in charge of these AI innovations would plan to help these productivity increases benefit individual members of society who do not work for their companies, allowing them to work less without taking a pay cut, as Gates alluded to.
Pete Buttigieg is among the few politicians who have spoken out about the need for governmental involvement to help make sure AI leads to a more utopian society rather than a more dystopian one, saying there should be “AI dividends” that would spread the wealth of “the value that is being created by AI.”
“I think it’s giving everybody a share in the overall value that’s being created by technologies, which again rest on technologies that the taxpayer paid for in the first place back in the ’60s,” Buttigieg, the former U.S. Secretary of Transportation, said. “So why shouldn’t we all get a share? Instead of it all going to this tiny handful of super, super wealthy people who are consolidating their own power, but like mega mega billionaires consolidating their power, right? We have to have tax policy that does that.”
Bezos, however, remains optimistic. As he said in Italy, “I don’t see how anybody can be discouraged who is alive right now.”
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