The long run is wanting shiny, at the very least based on Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Fortune reported on Bezos’ speech at Italian Tech Week 2025, the place he shared his imaginative and prescient of the long run — one that features dwelling in area and an absence of commutes.
Included amongst Bezos’ predictions is the expectation that by 2045, robots will commute to work for us. Extra vital than that, although, is his prediction that inside the subsequent decade or two, tens of millions shall be having fun with life in area.
Bezos additionally shared his disbelief with those that predict the downfall of civilization resulting from AI and technological advances. AI, nonetheless, is already liable for individuals shedding jobs, and the information facilities required to energy the expertise devour an enormous quantity of pure assets. Contemplating these components, it is simple to see how individuals can predict doom and gloom with AI’s continued use.
The potential advantages are apparent, too, by permitting a machine to synthesize big volumes of knowledge and draw conclusions or suggestions in minutes — in some instances even serving to to unravel air pollution and energy issues, even when we’ve got but to see any such answer compensate for the facility utilization related to the numerous tens of millions of extra trivial AI makes use of per day.
The Amazon founder is not the one billionaire who’s wanting ahead to a future in area, both. Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, predicts that in a mere decade, school grads shall be working off-planet on thrilling (and intensely well-paid) initiatives, whereas Elon Musk stays satisfied that people shall be dwelling on Mars as quickly as 2028.
Not the entire uber-rich are believers in area journey, although. Invoice Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, informed James Corden that he believes humanity ought to prioritize fixing our present planet over planning ventures into area.
“Area? Now we have so much to do right here on Earth,” he mentioned.
Based on Fortune, Gates “has been on the fence about how far we should always push expertise.”
Whereas Gates mentioned in an interview with Jimmy Fallon that AI and machines might start a brand new period the place individuals solely must work a few days per week whereas machines do the remainder, he additionally as soon as defined that if he ever got here throughout a time-traveler, he’d query them on the way forward for humanity underneath AI.
To Gates’ level, it is also unclear how any of the tech firms and moguls in control of these AI improvements would plan to assist these productiveness will increase profit particular person members of society who don’t work for his or her firms, permitting them to work much less with out taking a pay reduce, as Gates alluded to.
Pete Buttigieg is among the many few politicians who’ve spoken out in regards to the want for governmental involvement to assist make certain AI results in a extra utopian society quite than a extra dystopian one, saying there needs to be “AI dividends” that may unfold the wealth of “the worth that’s being created by AI.”
“I believe it is giving everyone a share within the total worth that is being created by applied sciences, which once more relaxation on applied sciences that the taxpayer paid for within the first place again within the ’60s,” Buttigieg, the previous U.S. Secretary of Transportation, mentioned. “So why should not all of us get a share? As an alternative of all of it going to this tiny handful of tremendous, tremendous rich people who find themselves consolidating their very own energy, however like mega mega billionaires consolidating their energy, proper? Now we have to have tax coverage that does that.”
Bezos, nonetheless, stays optimistic. As he mentioned in Italy, “I do not see how anyone will be discouraged who’s alive proper now.”
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