The long run is wanting shiny, not less than in line with 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 residing in area and a scarcity 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 will probably be having fun with life in area.
Bezos additionally shared his disbelief with those that predict the downfall of civilization because of AI and technological advances. AI, nevertheless, is already liable for individuals dropping jobs, and the information facilities required to energy the know-how devour a large quantity of pure sources. Contemplating these elements, it is easy 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 enormous volumes of information and draw conclusions or suggestions in minutes — in some circumstances even serving to to resolve air pollution and energy issues, even when we’ve but to see any such resolution compensate for the facility utilization related to the various 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 will probably be working off-planet on thrilling (and intensely well-paid) initiatives, whereas Elon Musk stays satisfied that people will probably be residing on Mars as quickly as 2028.
Not the entire uber-rich are believers in area journey, although. Invoice Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, advised James Corden that he believes humanity ought to prioritize fixing our present planet over planning ventures into area.
“House? We now have quite a bit to do right here on Earth,” he mentioned.
In response to Fortune, Gates “has been on the fence about how far we should always push know-how.”
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 every 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 command 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 lower, 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 sure that AI results in a extra utopian society reasonably than a extra dystopian one, saying there ought to be “AI dividends” that might unfold the wealth of “the worth that’s being created by AI.”
“I feel it is giving all people 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? We now have to have tax coverage that does that.”
Bezos, nevertheless, 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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