Billionaires and tech CEOs have shared two distinct views on humanity’s future when it comes to AI: Some think it’ll wipe out all jobs and spell the end of civilization as we know it, while others hope it could lead to a utopian world—and Jeff Bezos is firmly in the latter category.
“I don’t see how anybody can be discouraged who is alive right now,” the Amazon and Blue Origin founder said on stage at Italian Tech Week 2025, adding there’s much to look forward to as technology advances.
For one, no one enjoys the dreaded commute to work, and by 2045, Bezos predicts we’ll have robots to do that for us. After all, in his vision, we won’t just be commuting to work—we’ll be venturing to other planets.
“In the next kind of couple of decades, I believe there will be millions of people living in space,” he said. “That’s how fast this is going to accelerate.”
“They’ll mostly be living there because they want to,” he added. “We don’t need people to live in space.”
“If you need to do some work on the surface of the moon or anywhere else, we will be able to send robots to do that work, and that will be much more cost-effective than sending humans.”
And Bezos can’t wrap his head around the doom and gloom rhetoric that’s been going around since ChatGPT’s frenzied launch: “Civilizational abundance comes from our inventions,” he insisted.
“So 10,000 years ago, or whenever it was, somebody invented the plough, and we all got richer…. I’m talking about all of civilization, these tools increase our abundance, and that pattern will continue.”
Sam Altman and Elon Musk predict space living is coming soon too
It’s not just Bezos who predicts that you could be applying for jobs and a mortgage from another planet in the coming future: Sam Altman and Elon Musk have shared similar predictions too.
In just 10 years’ time, OpenAI’s CEO Altman says college graduates will be working “some completely new, exciting, super well-paid” job in space. The ChatGPT creator even said he’s jealous of young people because his generation’s early-career jobs will look “boring” and “old” by comparison.
Musk, Tesla‘s CEO and the world’s richest person, has single-handedly been one of most influential leaders in pushing for 21st-century space accessibility. After all, he’s the cofounder and CEO of $1.95 trillion SpaceX, which has worked hand-in-hand with NASA to advance space exploration. He thinks humans will be on Mars as soon as 2028, with unmanned SpaceX rockets commencing lift-off next year.
More recently, Voyager Technologies founder and CEO Dylan Taylor told Fortune living and working in space isn’t just a far-fetched reality—and he also pegged a pretty soon date for when it’ll happen.
“Humans will definitely be living and working in space,” the billionaire space exec exclusively revealed to Fortune. “That’ll happen in the 2030s—probably early 2030s.”
Taylor would know: He’s an angel investor in Space Adventures and an early investor in Relativity Space, along with Mark Cuban. In 2017, he founded his first space venture, Space for Humanity, and then two years later he founded Voyager—and that bet paid off last year, when the company went public on the NYSE, hitting a $3.8 billion valuation, and turning Taylor into a billionaire at 53. Voyager is now building the replacement for the International Space Station and holds multiple NASA contracts.
“We’ll have a moon base, people living and working on the moon,” he added. “You’ll be able to look up at the moon and see lights on the moon.”
You may also have a two-day week to look forward to
While space exploration is seemingly right around the corner, Bill Gates thinks billionaires and world leaders would be better off focusing their efforts on the planet we currently call home.
“Space? We have a lot to do here on Earth,” the Microsoft cofounder previously said in an interview with comedian James Corden.
He has been on the fence about how far we should push technology, once saying if he could ask a time traveler anything, he’d want to know whether AI eventually doomed or helped humanity.
On the optimistic side, Gates predicts AI could open up a new era for workers, where a two-day is the norm, machines do the hard work, and people have more time to do the things they love. Even he can see the upside in that: “If you zoom out, the purpose of life is not just to do jobs,” he said.
A version of this story originally published on Fortune.com on October 15, 2025.
Read more about the future of work from Fortune’s Orianna Rosa Royle:
- CEO of the world’s largest workspace provider says commuting will be extinct by 2040—and your kids will think it’s ‘mad stuff’ professionals once did
- Google DeepMind chief AI officer warns the odds of AI wiping out the human race are ‘not zero’—but she disagrees with Elon Musk’s predictions for the future of work and money
- AI won’t steal your job—but it might cut your paycheck, Europe’s central bank says
- Elon Musk predicts robot surgeons in 3 years, immortality, and no need for retirement savings
- Gen Zers could swipe millennials’ jobs if they have AI skills, LinkedIn and Microsoft data shows
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